


A Town Called Elysium

by cali-chan (girls_are_weird)



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan, The Trials of Apollo - Rick Riordan
Genre: Alternate Universe, Everwood AU, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-20
Updated: 2016-12-04
Packaged: 2018-09-01 04:19:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 27,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8607445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/girls_are_weird/pseuds/cali-chan
Summary: When circumstances force Percy's family to move to a quaint town in the mountains, he puts the blame for his frustrations straight on his absentee father's shoulders. But as they slowly acclimate to small-town living, they begin to form new friendships and relationships, demonstrating that sometimes it takes a place with heart like Elysium, Colorado to show a person what living really is. Inspired by the TV show Everwood.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Chapter 1_
> 
> **Author:** Carla, aka cali-chan  
>  **Rating:** PG-13.  
>  **Genre:** Family, friendship, drama, romance, probably some humor because "oh, small-town charm" and on top of that, these characters are all sassmasters (that's why we love 'em).  
>  **Pairings:** All the canon pairings (...eventually).  
>  **Canon/timeline:** AU, inspired by the TV show _Everwood_ (why yes, I find connections to my fandoms _everywhere_. It's a gift).
> 
> **Disclaimer:** I only hid Percy in my closet for a couple of nights. It's not kidnapping if I sent him back, right? (AKA: PJO/HoO don't belong to me, they're all RR's).  
>   
>  **Note:** Percy's going to be a bit of a grump in the first few chapters. Don't worry, he'll be back to his fun, bright and sassy self as soon as his father's out of the picture. ;)

"Oh, come _on!_ " Percy groaned, throwing his mother a frustrated look.  
  
Sally Jackson raised her eyebrows at him. "Don't give me that attitude, Percy. You know I'm only doing this to make sure you're safe."  
  
Being a teenager, Percy had mastered the art of angrily putting on his backpack, as he proceeded to demonstrate. "You seriously think it's better for me to walk to school through two feet of snow than take the car?" Yet another thing New York had over this nothing little town: it snowed in New York, too, but when it did, the school district had enough sense to suspend classes. In Elysium it seemed like they saw a full blanket of snow as only a minor inconvenience.  
  
She crossed her arms over her chest and gave him a "Mom" look, which effectively shut him up. "Now, these are your options: either you go by bike— _carefully_ — or you call your father to come pick you up."  
  
"Wait, how come _he_ gets to drive?" he complained immediately. He wasn't even sure why his father was in Elysium to begin with. Wasn't the whole point of shipping them off to Colorado that he _didn't_ have to see them? Sometimes Poseidon had those moments where he wanted to pretend he wasn't a crappy father, and this time he seemed to think the first day of school merited his presence. Particularly since it was his influence (and his money) that got Percy into Greek Hill High well after the official application period had closed.  
  
Sally wasn't having any of his protests. "You just got your permit last month. He's an adult and I can't tell him what to do," she replied, matter-of-factly.  
  
"Yeah, just like you didn't say a word when dad up and _made_ us leave New York for this frozen hellhole," he muttered under his breath, but clearly not quietly enough, as he saw his mother sigh and shake her head. It was an argument they'd had many times, and never quite settled. He didn't want to have it all over again; he loved his mom, and he didn't really blame her for their current situation. No, that was all on Poseidon. "I'll take the bike," he said, pulling the second strap of his bag over his shoulder as he walked to the door.  
  
He was halfway down the porch steps when she called out to him again. "Hey!" He looked at her over his shoulder, to where she was leaning against the doorframe, wrapping her thin robe around herself a little tighter; it was cold outside. "Come give me a kiss," she signaled to him to come back up for a second.  
  
He rolled his eyes— hey, he was sixteen and being told to kiss your mother like a kindergartener was embarrassing, okay?— but otherwise complied. She hugged him tightly. "Have a good first day, sweetie," she added, rearranging his hair off his eyes a bit before she kissed his temple. "I'm sure Tyson will want to hear all the details when you come back this afternoon."  
  
"Yeah, because my life is just _that_ exciting," he retorted, dryly. Sally chuckled. Truth be told, they both knew he could spend the entire day staring at a wall and Tyson would still find the retelling riveting. Tyson just idolized his older brother that way.  
  
Untangling himself from his mother's arms, he skipped down the porch steps two at a time and went to unlock his bike, already not looking forward to being the new kid in school... yet again.  
  


.  
.  
.

Sally watched her son pedal away until he turned the corner at the end of their street. Her Percy was all grown up now, almost a man, but it never got any easier for a mother to see her son off for a first day of classes. She only hoped Greek Hill High would be the one to stick; there were a limited number of schools Percy could transfer to in Elysium and its surroundings if he got expelled this time.

She was so lost in her thoughts, she didn't even notice anyone else was nearby until she heard someone clear their throat. Startled, she turned around to see a man standing out on the porch of the house next to hers. He wasn't short but wasn't very tall either, and was probably in his late thirties if his salt-and-pepper hair was any indication. Said hair was longish, dark waves curling slightly at the ends against his nape; he was handsome, in an understated way. He was wearing slacks and a white shirt unbuttoned at the collar, with a tan wool coat— light, like the type one might put on to only briefly walk outside the house (she made a mental note to get one of those for herself as soon as possible).

He wore thin-rimmed glasses and slippers on his feet, and he was holding a mug with a cartoon mustache on it in his right hand. "Good morning, neighbor," he greeted her with a small smile. "Paul Blofis," he introduced himself. "It's nice to meet you." Since they were separated by the entire length of Sally's porch, he couldn't exactly shake her hand, so he went for the next available option and gave her a small wave with his one free hand. "I must admit I was getting curious to see who bought the house next door. It's been on the market for a while."

"Ah, it must have been waiting for us, then," Sally returned his smile, moving a couple steps forward so she wouldn't have to raise her voice for him to hear her. "I'm Sally Jackson. That was my son, Percy," she pointed down the street in the direction Percy had left in. "My youngest son, Tyson, is still asleep in his room."

"Ah," Paul nodded. "Off to Greek Hill High, I presume?" he asked his eyes moving in the direction Sally had signaled. She nodded. "Next time I can drive him there if he prefers that. I work at Greek Hill myself," he revealed.

He paused to take a sip of what she assumed was coffee. She wasn't surprised that he had overheard part of their conversation; Percy had a tendency to be loud, especially when he was complaining. "I'm sure he'd like that much better than going by bike. What do you do at Greek Hill?"

"I teach English," he replied, still smiling. "What grade is Percy in? He might be in one of my classes."

"He's a junior this year." She linked her hands in front of her chest as if adding emphasis to her words. "Oh, if you could keep an eye out for him, that would be a weight off my shoulders. Percy's always had trouble with studying, he's had to switch schools so many times already..."

"Behavioral problems?"

"Not really. He's been called out for his attitude a few times, but he's not a bad kid. It's just, between the ADHD and the dyslexia, classes and exams are very difficult for him. It's actually part of the reason why we chose Greek Hill," she admitted, with a small shrug of her shoulders. "We thought smaller class sizes would make things a little bit easier for him. We tried public school back in New York, and that was a disaster."

"So you're from the Big Apple! Not many city transplants around here these days. Or ever, really," he added with a chuckle. She wasn't surprised; she couldn't imagine a place more different from New York City than Elysium, Colorado. "And I wouldn't worry too much. You made the right choice in Greek Hill; we have many students with learning disabilities and most of them are thriving. I'm sure Percy will love it there."

"Oh, I really hope so," she sighed. A cool breeze picked up momentarily, making her shiver, and she realized she had been standing outside longer than she'd originally planned. "If you excuse me, I have to go make breakfast before Tyson wakes up."

"Yes, of course. I have to finish getting ready myself. It was nice meeting you, Sally," he gave her another small wave. She replied in kind and he turned around to go back inside his house.

Sally did the same, smiling to herself as she got ready to make some scrambled eggs. Her neighbor seemed nice, and her fears about Percy's new school were slightly mitigated. Perhaps they were starting their new life in Elysium on the right foot.

.  
.  
.

Percy was lost in thought as he pedaled to school. (His mother probably wouldn't approve, but hey, she wasn't around to give his ear a pull). He was mainly thinking about the chain of events that brought his family to Elysium; as with many other undesired situations in his life, it all started with his father, world-renowned neurosurgeon Poseidon Irving. [1]

Percy's relationship with his father started off wrong since before Percy was even conceived. Poseidon met Percy's mom when he operated on her uncle Rich, the man who raised her after her parents died in a plane crash, to remove a brain tumor that other doctors had deemed inoperable. Sally was barely eighteen then. Poseidon's "miracle hands" gave uncle Rich an extra two years that he wouldn't have had otherwise, but they were two very tough years, as uncle Rich couldn't work anymore and his motion functions were affected; he needed someone to help him with even the most basic tasks.

Sally had to drop out of high school and work odd jobs in order to care for her uncle. During those two years, Poseidon continued to visit for check-ups and was very attentive with Sally, going above and beyond what was expected of any doctor. They grew close, and soon enough Sally was pregnant with Percy. This would've been all fine and dandy, except Poseidon neglected to mention that he was already married to another woman.

Mira [2], his wife, couldn't care less about her husband's extracurricular activities, so long as it didn't affect her precious image and their bank account. That was how the truth came out, actually: with Poseidon's reluctance to legally recognize Percy as his son. Any public record of him having an illegitimate child being found by the wrong person could lead to a PR nightmare.

Poseidon insisted he did it for his patients. His field of work required patients to put their lives in his hands, and so they needed to trust him on all levels; therefore, if his name was going to be in the papers, it would be because of his medical prowess and not his personal life. Internally, Percy thought it was because he was as vain as his wife, unwilling to let people see him as anything but perfect. There really was something, Percy mused, to everything people said about surgeons having God complexes.

Whatever the reason, it became obvious to Sally that 1) he wasn't planning on divorcing his wife, and 2) he would never be Percy's father, except behind closed doors. When that became clear, she ended the relationship, registered Percy with her own last name, and set out to raise him all on her own.

Poseidon did his part in supporting his son financially, Percy had to give him that. He even gave child support for Tyson, even though he wasn't his. Sure, every birthday it was his secretary who called the boys to congratulate them, but a check arrived at the bank every month without fail. Because that's what fathers are for, right?

Sally eventually got her GED and found a stable job at a candy shop, and they made do. Their apartment was small and it wasn't in a particularly nice part of town, but it was theirs, and that was enough. It was at the candy store where Sally met the man who would eventually become her husband, Gabe Ugliano. Percy never liked the guy; he was lazy, mean, smelled like a pig who had just thrown up a bucketful of bad beans, and treated Percy like he was an incredibly annoying mosquito rather than a child.

Percy didn't care what smelly Gabe thought of him— he just tried to stay away from Gabe as much as possible and that was usually good enough to keep Gabe off his back. What Percy really couldn't stand, though, was how Gabe treated his mother. He didn't respect her at all, treating her more like a maid than a wife, and expecting her to do everything for him while he lazed about on the couch with a beer in his hand and his pants unbuttoned. He repeatedly told her she was useless and treated her like she was stupid, but he demanded her attention 24/7, even going as far as pulling her out of work several times on some ridiculous whim.

Gabe's constant appearances at Sally's workplace eventually got her fired, and that was the stroke that broke the camel's back. Percy walked in on a huge argument as he came home from school: Sally in disbelief that he had caused her to lose her job, and Gabe trying to relieve himself of any responsibility because surely it had to be something Sally did that pissed her boss off. Things got heated, both of them screaming at each other back and forth, and eventually Gabe roughly grabbed Sally by the arm and raised his hand at her. Percy lost it. Although he was only twelve at the time, he didn't think twice before forcibly pushing Gabe off his mother.

It helped that the most exercise Gabe ever did was raising a bottle to his lips; thrown off-balance, he toppled back until he banged his head against a wall. Taking advantage of Gabe's grogginess, Sally pulled Percy back and told Gabe in no uncertain terms to get out of her apartment for good or she would call the police on him. That was the last Percy saw of smelly Gabe; Sally returned all his stuff by delivery service (paid collect, of course) so that her soon-to-be ex-husband wouldn't have to step foot in their home again.

It was difficult for Sally to find a job in the recession, and for a few months they lived off her savings. She decided to start her own business in the form of an online bakery, but it was slow to get off the ground. It was also when Tyson came into their lives; he was an orphan who was put in the system, but the system wasn't made for children like him. Tyson was born with a comparatively mild case of Down Syndrome, but it wasn't mild enough for him to be able to go to school without any aid, and he was struggling. Percy befriended him quickly and tried to help him as much as he could, but there was only so much he could do, he was still a child himself.

When he told his mother about Tyson, Sally realized the child needed special care and homeschooling, things his foster parents weren't equipped to give him, as they were only in it for the government checks. She attempted to gain custody of the poor boy, but it was difficult for a single, self-employed woman to be granted custody when she already had one child she could barely support.

That's when Poseidon swooped back in. After learning how tight things had become for them after Sally's divorce, he offered to support them in everything they needed— not just in the form of Percy's child support payments, but also paying their rent, food, utilities and any other necessities they had— to make up for being absent through the whole Gabe debacle. Because that's what Poseidon did: throw money at problems as if that were enough to make them go away.

If it had been up to Percy, he wouldn't have accepted the offer. Sally had turned down Poseidon's money several times in the past, but this time she knew she wasn't in a position to refuse: soon her savings would start to dwindle and they wouldn't be able to pay rent, and what's more, Poseidon's money (coming in as a regular injection to the bakery account) and especially his _lawyers_ , won Sally the custody and eventual adoption of Tyson.

So for the last four or so years, the Jacksons had been living in an apartment paid, stocked and maintained by Poseidon, with Percy going through what felt like every private school in the tri-state area on Poseidon's bank account. Sally still had her online bakery, but most of her time and effort went to homeschooling Tyson and helping Percy pass each grade without _too_ much of a struggle. Percy knew she wasn't happy with the fact that they depended entirely on someone else's money to survive, but she wanted the best for her children and she could swallow her pride for them. Apart from basic necessities, she didn't use a dime of that money on herself, ever, and Percy loved her for it.

Poseidon's sporadic contact with his children didn't change. Shelling out money by the bucketloads wasn't a problem for him; he had enough money for two lifetimes and his wife didn't care as long as there remained enough of it to keep up her lifestyle. It wasn't a good idea for him to visit too often, though, as New York was too crowded and his profile was too high for repeated visits to go unnoticed. For what little they saw of Poseidon, Tyson idolized the guy. Called him "Daddy" and everything. Percy didn't have the heart to bring his brother down, and his mother insisted that he should get along with his father, so usually he tried to be civil. But this latest stunt he pulled? That was crossing a line.

The turn of the tide came when Percy joined the municipal swimming club the summer before his freshman year. Initially it was just something he could do to spend all that extra energy, but as time went on, Percy realized he had finally found something he not only liked, but was also good at. And he was _very_ good: he started winning competitions all the time, beating records and making his times better and better to the point he could compete at county and even state level.

At the beginning of the past summer, he actually qualified for nationals in freestyle 800 m, breaking the current record at the time. Winning that race had been one of the best moments of his life, and he didn't think he'd ever seen his mother look so proud. He really loved swimming, and he hoped one day he could make it to the Olympics. In the meantime, the final competition would take place in August, and Percy immediately threw himself into training, while his mother and the club helped out in securing sponsors for him.

His performance in the qualification rounds earned him a fair bit of attention from the press. It's not like he made the front page of the Times or anything, but they did air some quick interviews in a couple local news channels, and there were some mentions of his achievement in a few of the local papers. Nothing major, but it was still too close for comfort for Mira. New York was rife with paparazzi, and all it took was one person asking the wrong questions for the identity of Percy's father to come to light, especially since he was now going to be competing at a national level.

Percy wasn't there to see it, but apparently the woman threw a tantrum of biblical proportions. She still didn't care how much money Poseidon threw away on his "other family," but she wanted him to do it away from New York— away from the public eye. So she gave Poseidon an ultimatum: either he got the Jacksons to move somewhere sufficiently far from civilization that the threat of their connection to Poseidon being recognized was minimal, or she was going to take back everything he gave them. Which she could easily do. It was all half hers, anyway.

Since the two boys were now old enough to make their own informed decisions, Sally took herself out of the equation, telling them she would only agree to the move if it's what they wanted to do. Percy, of course, declared he would rather go back to living in an apartment the size of a matchbox rather than accommodate the whims of a woman he'd never even met, but much to his frustration, his father bought Tyson's vote with the promise of a pony (thanks for that, traitor!), and then declared himself the tie-breaker against all of Percy's protests. Then, because he hadn't had enough ridiculousness, Poseidon pulled Tyson's geography textbook from a bookshelf, opened it on a map of the United States and put his finger down on a random location.

And that is how they ended up in Elysium, Colorado. Population: 6471, and filled with modern commodities such as a movie theater with three whole screening rooms, a Dairy Queen with a Drive-Thru, an authentic Chinese restaurant, and a pizza place. No, wait, make that an authentic Chinese restaurant that was _also_ a pizza place. And not only did Percy have to change schools yet again (he'd actually managed to go a year without getting expelled, too!), leave the only home he'd ever known and what few acquaintances he had made in the past... he also had to abruptly quit the swimming club, which meant he was immediately disqualified from nationals.

Could he be blamed for being pissed at his so-called father? He thought it was understandable, given the circumstances.

Before he could get angry all over again, he decided it was better to just pedal faster and hope to start the day in a slightly less murderous mood. Teenagers were slowly making their way into Greek Hill High's main building as he parked his bike, and he resolved to try and have a good first day, in spite of his father.

That resolution lasted about two minutes as, just as he was walking away from the bicycle stands, he accidentally bumped into someone. Someone huge. "Sorry, man," he offhandedly offered, but before he could keep walking, the guy grabbed him by the hood of his jacket and pulled him back.

"You think sorry's going to cut it, noob?" Percy turned around to finally see who was speaking. The guy was gigantic— could be 6' 4'', with biceps the size of Percy's head and a circumference around his middle that could probably cushion him in a car crash about as much as an air bag could. He had messy black hair with enough gel in it to get more than one unlucky insect stuck in there, plump cheeks to go with the belly and tiny eyes that were looking down at Percy like it would be the easiest thing in the world to flick him off the face of the Earth.

Great. A bully.

Percy _hated_ bullies. That's actually how he first met Tyson in school, rushing in to defend him from a group of boys who thought they were so cool because they could harass a helpless, younger kid with an intellectual disability. Bullies also reminded Percy of smelly Gabe; this one in particular because of his wide waistline. "Listen, pal, I don't want any trouble, so if you could just let go..." he suggested, figuring that getting into a fight would not be the best way to start off the school year.

The dude narrowed his eyes (or at least Percy _thought_ he was narrowing his eyes— it was hard to tell, really, as they were so beady) and tugged at Percy's hoodie sharply. "Don't call me 'pal,'" he warned, a clear threat in his voice. "People call me The Bull."

Out of the corner of his eye, Percy could see that the kids around them were standing to take notice of the scene: many were murmuring to each other, eyes on the pair, and some had outright stopped walking to watch the confrontation. There was also a group of four or five standing near, all boys except one girl, although she was built like a linebacker.

Alright, Percy didn't want to get into a fight on the first day of school, and he was sure if one arose The Bull's posse would endeavor to make it six against one, but he was no pushover, and he had never been one to hold back on wisecracks when the perfect opportunity presented itself to him on a silver platter. "I can see why they call you that," he blurted out, because it was too good not to say it. "It must take four stomachs to keep you in... that shape."

A _round_ shape, he added in his mind but left unsaid. He figured most people got the joke, anyway, as murmurs erupted from the crowd around them. A loud bark of laughter came from a girl standing with two others near the "Greek Hill High School" sign in front of the parking lot. He only had a brief second to look her way, but he saw that it was a girl with short, spiky black hair with streaks of blue in it, wearing ripped jeans and a black leather jacket.

His attention was dragged back to The Bull when he was pulled by his hood again. "What's that supposed to mean?" He looked completely befuddled, and Percy wasn't surprised: in his experience, most bullies were dumb as rocks. He probably didn't have the slightest clue how bovine digestive systems worked, but he certainly didn't miss the laughter bursting out from the crowd. "Are you making fun of me?!"

"Of someone who's named after an animal that spends the entire day swatting flies off its ass with its tail? Yeah. I mean," he shrugged as best he could with the tension of someone's fists pulling at his hoodie, "the mocking practically happens by itself."

There was another bark of laughter from the punk girl in the back. "Man, the new kid is _schooling_ you, Eustace!" With that distraction, Percy finally got a good look at her two friends. One was a tall, blond guy who was watching the scene with a slight frown on his face, his eyes framed by rimless glasses. The other was a girl with blonde hair that fell around her face in loose curls, like a fairytale princess'; she was observing everything with a curious, almost calculating expression, and when her eyes met his, Percy felt like she could stare into his soul.

The Bull— _Eustace_ — turned his head around to throw the punk girl a glare that did not affect her in the least. "Shut up, Grace!" Then he turned back to Percy, grabbing him by the collar of his hoodie instead, clearly not pleased to be the butt of the joke. "Listen here, newbie," he said, menacingly getting right up in Percy's face. Percy could now confirm that his breath was also as bad as his namesake's. "I don't know where you come from, but around here people respect seniors."

Percy was about to retort something about senior _citizens_ that would probably get him punched, but he was conveniently saved by the arrival at the scene of someone he assumed was a teacher. "Mr. Cowden!" said the man as he walked up to them from the front door of the building, tall and brown-haired, with a scruffy beard, carrying a briefcase and wearing an awful lot of tweed. "I would thank you if you would release Mr. Jackson from your hold," he added, and it was clearly not just a suggestion.

The Bull glared at Percy once more for good measure, and then begrudgingly let go of his hoodie. "Mr. Brunner," Bull started what was sure to be a poor excuse for his behavior, "I was only welcoming the new kid to—"

"I know exactly what you were doing, Mr. Cowden. I was watching your interaction since the beginning." Brunner clearly wasn't having any of Eustace's BS. (Get it? BS? Haha). "Please take your things and wait for me outside my office. We will have a talk about how to properly welcome new students to our school." As the Bull angrily shuffled into the building, Brunner turned to the crowd that was still loitering around them. "Everyone else head to class! Contrary to popular belief, I can— and _will_ — mark the entire student body as tardy if you fail to make it to first period on time."

As the students slowly started making their way inside, Brunner turned to Percy, who was still standing there, unsure what was in store for him. "I apologize for the rather rough start to your stay at Greek Hill, Mr. Jackson."

"It's fine. Not your fault," Percy replied with a shrug. There were bullies everywhere, and there was little the school could do to prevent jerks like Eustace Cowden from being their jerk selves.

The older man nodded. "I am Mr. Brunner, I'm the Vice-Principal here," he introduced himself. "Perhaps we can find someone with a better disposition to give you a tour of the place... Mr. Underwood!" he called out to someone after a quick look around.

After a few seconds they were approached by another student. He was slightly shorter than Percy but rather lanky, wearing cargo pants, a "three R's" t-shirt and a hooded jacket that looked too big on him. He was pale, with a wispy goatee and curly brown hair that peeked out from under a multicolored rasta cap. "Mr. Underwood, this is Mr. Jackson. He's a new student, and I was hoping you could show him around today. You can get a hall pass from Ms. Mellie when you stop by the office."

"Sure, no problem," the boy agreed straight away. "Hey, man. I'm Grover," he says, extending a hand to Percy to shake.

"Percy," he replied as he clasped the boy's hand quickly.

"Very well," Mr. Brunner nodded to himself as he saw the arrangement was set up. "Mr. Jackson, I would like for you to stop by my office at some point before you leave today, so we can talk about what to expect from your time here at Greek Hill. For now, though, I urge you to go on ahead with Mr. Underwood. You want to miss as little class time as possible." With one last nod of his head, Mr. Brunner turned on them and started following the gaggle of students inside the school.

Percy picked his bag up from where it had fallen on the ground during the confrontation with the Bull, and as he stood up, Grover seemed about to say something, but stopped when he saw people approach them. It was the punk girl who had been laughing earlier, accompanied by her two blond friends.

She looked Percy up and down with electric blue eyes and a mischievous smirk. "Not bad, new kid," she said, giving Percy a small pat on the shoulder. "Not bad." With that, she continued her way toward the school. The blond guy with the glasses gave Percy and Grover a small smile and a nod of his head like _'Sup?_ as he walked by them following the girl.

The blonde girl took up the rear, only giving Percy a side-look as she passed, like he didn't warrant any more of her attention. In that half-second look, however, Percy noticed that her eyes were actually a striking shade of gray, like polished silver. Her golden hair swung slightly from side to side of her ponytail as she walked. He couldn't help but stare; she was really very pretty.

"...You good to go, man?" Grover's voice pulled him out of his daydream.

"Yeah... yeah, sure." Shaking his head clear of bullies and gray eyes, he followed Grover inside the school for a first day that was already looking like a disaster.

.  
.  
.

Tyson wanted to see more of Elysium, and Sally needed to buy ingredients for the bakery, so they decided to go grocery shopping while Percy was still at school.

After some research Sally actually found out that the nearest Walmart was actually a few miles outside the town limits, which was very inconvenient. As it turned out, everyone in Elysium shopped in a local grocery shop called "Demeter's Harvest." It was a larger space than Sally had expected from a small town (an old warehouse from the days when trains still stopped in Elysium), but most of the space was taken up with plants and patio supplies. Apparently the owner of the place was really into gardening, and that's where the store had started. Sally didn't mind; Tyson enjoyed looking at all the different flowers and playing "jungle explorer" among the foliage, and Sally loved seeing her boy play and have fun.

Their selection of groceries was also very limited, however; the closest they had to "ethnic" food was rice, the extent of their spices were cinnamon, nutmeg, and black pepper, and they had precious little as far as decorations went, so she'd have to order the rest online. Still, she did get all the basic ingredients for her baking, to the point that she practically took all the flour they had available with her (she'd have to re-stock sooner than she'd hoped). She also had enough food to put on the table for the week (their dinner would be a little blander than they had in New York... surely the boys wouldn't mind too much), so the trip was a productive one, in her opinion.

Now they were making their way to the checkout counter with two full shopping carts, both of which Tyson insisted on pushing. Sally was carrying a flowerpot holding an ornamental fern in her hands, so she didn't mind. As they got to the counter, they were greeted warmly by a college-aged young woman with brown hair. Her nametag read Miranda. "Hello! Did you find everything alright?" she asked them with a smile as she started ringing up their items.

After they exchanged the usual shopping venue conversation ("Do you have a frequent shopper card? You can get discounts on all green tag items!"), and the affirmation that they were indeed new in town (apparently in Elysium everyone knew everyone, so outsiders stood out like a sore thumb), the girl finally began to pay attention to the items she was ringing up. "Wow, that's a _lot_ of blue food coloring," she commented, not in a rude way, but more surprised.

Sally smiled. She got that reaction often. "My sons love blue food," she admitted with a smile, looking to the side at Tyson, who was very focused in unloading their groceries onto the conveyor belt. "It's a bit of an inside joke we have."

The girl smiled back, looking like she didn't really get it (well, that's why it was called an _inside_ joke), but found it cute nonetheless. "Well, they'll sure have enough blue food for a long while with all this flour you're getting."

"Oh, no, that's not for us," Sally chuckled at the girl's befuddled expression. "Those are for my job. I run a bakery."

For some reason, that seemed to startle the girl so much that she actually stopped ringing up items to stare awkwardly at Sally. "Oh. That's— that's great. Really great. But, um, you do know that there's already a bakery in town, right?"

Sally found the girl's obvious discomfort a little amusing and curious. "Yes, I know about it. Gardner's, right? I've heard good things. Surely a little competition can make things better for both establishments," she suggested tentatively. In New York there were bakeries in every corner— from nationwide chains to small mom-and-pops, family-run places, and it was the variety of it all that made it a successful business venture. There was something out there for everyone, no matter what your tastes were.

"Yes... yes, that's right," the girl seemed to realize she was being a little overdramatic and shook the awkwardness off, continuing to ring up the last few items in Sally's cart. "Where are you setting up shop, then? I'm gonna have to stop by and try these blue pastries for myself."

Sally laughed. "No, I'm not opening up a storefront. I bake from home. I have a website where people can place their orders and then I ship them by mail. Not just in Elysium, either; I can ship baked goods all over the country."

The girl's brow furrowed once again in confusion. "You send pastries by mail?" she asked, like she'd never heard of such a thing. "Like a... cupcake Amazon or something?" At Sally's nod, her eyebrows rose so high they got lost behind her fringe. "Well, that sounds... interesting. Still, I hope you don't mind if I come pick mine up at the source!" she finished with a sheepish laugh.

By her awkward attempt at fixing that last comment, Sally figured the girl wasn't trying to be rude, but rather was truly baffled by the idea. Elysium was a small town, pretty isolated because of the mountains, so it shouldn't be surprising that the concept of an online bakery felt a little like science fiction to people here. They'd get used to it soon enough, she was sure. "Oh, of course," she replied, giving the girl a quick nod.

Miranda read off the sales total and Sally handed her a debit card to cover it. When they were done putting all their bags back in the cart, the young woman gave them a genuine smile. "Welcome to Elysium, and I hope you have a great time here," she told them, sincerely. Turning toward Tyson, she cooed. "Especially this cutie here. What's your name, hun?"

Tyson gave her a smile and a wave. "I'm Tyson," he declared enthusiastically.

"That's a lovely name. I hope you're liking Elysium, Tyson," Miranda replied, lightly patting the boy's forearm, which was resting on the counter. Turning to Sally again, she asked: "He doesn't go to school?" She probably noticed the time— still a couple hours too early for school-aged kids to be running around.

"No, I take care of his lessons at home."

Miranda nodded wisely, like with that admission, now everything made sense. "Of course, of course. Real school must be too difficult for him, the poor thing." She patted Tyson's arm some more, shaking her head as if she was sad.

Sally cringed inwardly at the phrasing. While it was true that Tyson struggled through school when they first met him, it was like she was implying that homeschooling wasn't real education. The girl probably didn't realize her words could be interpreted that way, but that's the way it sounded to Sally. "Oh, he's not poor at all. He's actually doing really great in all his subjects. He's very smart. Isn't that right, Tyson?"

The boy nodded eagerly. "I'm almost finished with elementary," he informed the cashier, looking very proud. Sally's heart felt warm whenever she saw him so confident in himself.

"Of course you are, sweetheart," the girl retorted, and now Sally was getting a little irritated at her patronizing tone. Even though Tyson was fourteen and already taller than everyone else in their household, as soon as people took a look at his face, they tended to coo at him like he was a baby.

She knew they didn't do it to be mean; it was something that came from a place of ignorance of what children with Down Syndrome really were like. Regular people had little exposure to children like this, and they had no idea of how special they were, how intelligent and determined they could be. She could only imagine how limited that exposure was in a small town like Elysium. Still, she didn't want Tyson to be exposed to that if she could help it. "Well, it's time for us to get home now. Lots of things to unload. It was nice to meet you, dear. I'm sure I'll see you around sometime."

"Yes, definitely," she said with a nod of her head. "Be sure to visit us again soon!" She added, very obviously switching back to the script the store most likely had her spout at every customer. Sally picked up her new fern and gave the girl one last (more reserved) smile. Tyson waved at her again and rushed to push the carts toward the exit.

As they put the bags in the trunk of the car, she pondered that maybe the point was not to get acclimated to a new town as much as to get the new town acclimated to them.

.  
.  
.

That afternoon, Percy walked out of the vice-principal's office with about as much enthusiasm as he could muster at the end of the first day of the school year; that is, none at all. It had been nice of Vice-Principal Brunner to try and give him the ins and outs of the code of conduct at his new school, but apart from the fact that the students couldn't eat lunch out in the yard because apparently in Elysium it snowed from September till May (why did the school even _have_ a yard, then?), it hadn't really been much different than the usual spiel he had already heard at all the other schools he'd attended in the past.

His classes hadn't been much more interesting than they were in New York, either. He'd mostly had math and science classes today, and he'd never been very good at those. Well, to be fair he wasn't very good at any classes, but math was definitely his Achilles' heel. All those numbers and equations, he could never understand any of it; it was like they were written in Greek or something.

Grover had stuck by him for most of the day, showing him to his classes and even sitting with him at lunch. Percy liked him, he seemed like a cool dude, although he talked a little too much about his girlfriend Juniper and was very, very insistent on Percy sorting his trash correctly (hey, he was all for recycling, but anyone would get a little tired of being reminded every five minutes).

But still, it was nice not to be completely alone on the first day of classes, especially since everybody kept staring at him like he was some kind of sideshow attraction. Grover insisted it was only because he was new, and the novelty would wear off soon enough. Percy hoped he was right.

The door to Prof. Brunner's office led straight to the School Office proper, where the School Secretary, Ms. Mellie, was still sitting, apparently filing some documents. She smiled at Percy as he passed. He had talked to her in the morning and she seemed like a really sweet, bubbly lady, so he figured he had no reason be rude to her. He nodded lightly as a greeting.

It was then that he noticed she wasn't the only person there: on the opposite site of Ms. Mellie's desk stood the blonde, gray-eyed girl he had seen this morning. Once again his eyes were drawn to her like a magnet. She truly was beautiful; even though she was only wearing jeans and a t-shirt, she seemed to radiate a confidence that only alpha females could conjure in an environment full of awkward teenagers. She seemed to be filling out a form, and was very focused on it, to the point where she didn't seem to realize Percy's presence.

Figuring that it was more than a little creepy to stand there just staring at her like an idiot, he shook himself out of the trance and not-so-gently reminded himself that girls like that were way out of his league. Tightening his hold on the strap of his backpack, he walked toward the door of the office intent on grabbing his bike and going back home, but just as he was about to cross the threshold he saw that someone was waiting for him outside, and it was the person he least wanted to see at the moment.

Poseidon caught sight of him and signaled for him to wait with one finger, as he was currently arguing with someone on his cell phone. It wasn't an unusual sight; most of Percy's few memories with his father involved Poseidon paying more attention to his phone than to his children. One big difference this time, though, was that Poseidon wasn't wearing some kind of smart business suit as he usually did in New York, but instead he was wearing the ugliest sweater any human being had ever worn outside of the holiday season. Percy figured he was probably trying to "blend in with the locals"... and failing miserably.

Out of pure politeness (he didn't want his mother to give him an earful when he got home) he waited there as Poseidon finished his phone call. It was a few minutes of utter boredom; he couldn't even eavesdrop on the conversation because they were talking neuroscience and he couldn't understand a word of it. Eventually, though, with a final "Call my secretary! She's the one who knows all the details. I have to go," he finally locked the phone and put it back in his pocket. "Hello, son!" he exclaimed, turning to Percy with the same bright, arrogantly charming smile he gave reporters when he was being interviewed for Time Magazine. "How'd your first day go?"

"What are you doing here?" Percy, who _wasn't_ smiling in any definition of the word, asked rather bluntly. There should be a rule for parents who show up at their children's school unanounced. And that rule should be fairly simple in the case of Poseidon Irving: _Don't._

"I came to pick you up from school, of course!" he said, signaling the empty hallway around him like he'd just declared that Christmas had come early and expected Percy to react accordingly.

"Well, gee, it's so nice of you to do this for the first time ever ten years into my schooling," Percy retorted dryly. He was hoping to avoid whatever father-son "bonding" awkwardness he had planned for the ride home. The last time Percy had been with his father in a confined space for any extended period of time, Poseidon had turned the conversation to fishing, which he seemed to believe was the only topic he had in common with his son. Except he didn't; Percy liked _fish_ , not fish _ing_ , and the entire conversation had been a colossal waste of time and patience. He did not want a repeat of that anytime soon.

Poseidon shook his head at him, as if disappointed. "Don't be like that, son. You're always saying I don't spend enough time with you... well, here I am. I'm trying, here!" Moving forward to clasp a hand on Percy's shoulder, he lightly pushed him, trying to encourage him to walk toward the exit.

"I'd rather just go by bike," Percy insisted, planting his feet firmly and not moving an inch.

"You're going to have to go home eventually and then you'll have no choice but to talk to me," Poseidon pointed out smartly, and it was true, but Percy was very determined to delay that moment as much as humanly possible.

"Oh, you mean _our_ home?" he returned, highlighting Poseidon's particular phrasing. He didn't get to talk like he was a part of their family. He wasn't. "Because as far as I remember, you live in a condo on the opposite side of the country."

"I'm trying to do you a favor here," Poseidon insisted. "Unless you're telling me you actually _prefer_ pedaling for miles in the cold with a blanket of snow on the ground."

He preferred it to riding awkwardly in a car with his father, yes. Still, he was running out of arguments. He had to think of something quick, before he pulled the Mom card. "Actually, did you know that our carbon footprint has increased over 30% since the nineties?" he blurted out one of the random environmental facts Grover had shared with him at some point of the day. "Really, the responsible thing to do would be for me to go by bike, that way we produce only half the emissions."

"That's not really how it wo—" Poseidon started to debunk his latest excuse, but he was interrupted by his phone's ringtone (some calypso tune that was probably older than Percy). "Hello?" he said into the speaker as he put the phone to his ear. He listened to whoever was on the other line for a few seconds before putting a hand over the speaker and turning toward Percy again. "Okay, fine, go by bike if you want. I'll be having dinner with you guys anyway." He went back to his phone conversation as he walked down the hallway toward the main entrance of the school.

Percy watched him go. He knew he would have to sit at the table with Poseidon tonight and pretend to be polite for his mother's sake; there was no getting out of that. "What are the odds he gets picked up for talking on the phone while driving and gets thrown in jail, so I don't actually have to see him at home?" he muttered under his breath.

It had been a rhetorical question, so he wasn't expecting to get an answer. "Actually not very high. Elysium has no stoplights, let alone traffic cameras." Startled, he looked behind him to see the blonde girl leaning against the office's doorframe, with her arms crossed like she had been watching a mildly entertaining event unfold. She seemed amused at his wide-eyed look of surprise. "Issues with your dad?"

"That's an understatement," came Percy's answer. He couldn't believe this girl was actually talking to him just like that, and believe you him, his father was at the absolute bottom of the list of topics he ever wanted to talk about with a pretty girl.

"Yeah, I know the feeling." She unfolded her arms and took a couple of steps outside into the hallway, so she was standing closer to him. "Your name is Percy Jackson, right? Our new transfer from New York?"

"How do you know that?" he asked. He was pretty sure he hadn't had any classes with her that day— he would've noticed if he had. Whenever she was in his periphery his eyes strayed to her like a moth to a flame.

"It's a small school," she said with a short tilt of her head. "Was Professor Brunner giving you the 'Welcome to Greek Hill' speech? He doesn't get to do that often enough, so I'm sure he was excited about it," she finished with a dry chuckle.

"Yeah. Nothing I haven't heard before, though," he admitted with a shrug. "What about you? What are you still doing here? Everybody's gone home by now."

"Oh, my friends are waiting for me outside," she pointed out, signaling vaguely in the direction of the school entrance. "I had to sign up for a class. Someone dropped out of AP Physics and if I waited until tomorrow the spot could be snagged up by someone else."

Percy let out a whistle. "AP classes, wow. You must be really smart, huh?" Being just an average student, and one with ADHD and dyslexia on top of that, he'd be lying if he said that wasn't a little intimidating to hear. Still, he liked that he was learning new things about her even in their first (but hopefully not last) conversation. Knowing that she was as smart as she was beautiful only made him want to get to know her better.

She shook her head. "It looks good on college applications," she added by way of an explanation. If only she knew that only made her seem even smarter. Even though he was a junior, Percy had never even given college a thought. The extent of his academical worries came to completing the current school year; he'd worry about college when the time came, and not a minute sooner. "Um, I gotta go. If I don't go out soon, my friends will—"

"Annabeth!" came a voice from the far end of the hallway. Both of them turned to look in that direction, and just a couple of seconds later a person came running their way: it was the blond boy Percy had seen hanging out with her that morning. "Annabeth, are you done yet? Thalia's almost about to leave without you—" He cut himself off when he saw that the girl— Annabeth, it seemed— was not alone. "Oh. Sorry," he said, raising his hands in front of him as if emphasizing that his bursting into their conversation was an accident.

"She can't leave without me, it's _my_ car," she answered the question with a roll of her eyes. "I'm almost done. Tell her to hold her horses, I'll be right out." The boy nodded in acknowledgment and, with one quick side-glance at Percy, turned around the way he came, presumably to relay the message.

The girl turned back to Percy. "So," he started, quick to start the conversation back up before she had the chance to tell him again that she had to leave. "Annabeth, huh?"

"Yeah. Annabeth Chase. It's nice to meet you, Percy Jackson." She smiled at him, and Percy felt his stomach do a somersault. He couldn't be sure yet, but he had a feeling smiles from Annabeth were a rare gift indeed. "I really have to go, though," she added a little sheepishly, and he understood he couldn't hold her back any longer. He could only hope they'd broken the ice and she wouldn't just ignore him for the rest of the school year.

She turned to walk down the hallway toward the exit, but after a couple of steps, she stopped and turned to look at him again. "By the way, I really liked how you put down Eustace this morning. He had it coming, he's a jerk."

"Yeah, that's what I thought, too," he replied with a shrug, allowing himself a small smirk. Normally he'd be against judging people based on the way they look, but then some people just love being walking stereotypes, and Eustace screamed "bully" from a mile away.

She chuckled. ( _Score another point for Jackson!_ ). "You should have lunch with us some day." And, like that wasn't _the most mind-blowing thing she'd said in their entire conversation_ , she turned and made her way down the hallway.

Percy's eyes stayed glued to her form as she walked away, and when she disappeared from sight he had to fight the urge to do a (highly embarrassing) happy jig.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [1] Irving is an English/Scottish last name meaning "green water." Thought it was fitting. Also, Kevin McKidd, who played Poseidon in the first _Percy Jackson_ movie, is Scottish. Yay double trivia! =D  
>   
>  [2] Mira means "sea, ocean" in Sanskrit. What can I say, nobody names their kid "Amphitrite" these days.  
>   
> Hey, all! I hope you liked this first chapter. I actually finished the first "episode" of this story (directly based on the first episode of _Everwood_ ), and it got to be really long, so it'll be divided into three chapters. I'll try my best to post the second and third chapters within the next two weeks.  
>   
> I have not started writing the second "episode" and for reference, this first one took me about a year and a half to write as it is, so I can't promise speedy updates after chapter three is posted. I'm a slow writer; when it comes to my stories, it's better to not expect updates at all and then be pleasantly surprised when a new chapter pops up out of the blue. Just bein' honest here. I hope you can understand that.  
>   
> In any case, I'll be posting snippets and excerpts from anything I write on my Tumblr (girls-are-weird) so be sure to follow me there! I'll have chapter 2 up around this time next week, so please do tell me what you thought of this one, and what you think of this AU idea in general. Surely I can't be the only one around who loved _Everwood_ , right? If you did, too, please tell me in a comment!  
>   
> PS: If you're wondering "Where's [insert-character-here]? Why didn't you include him/her?!" then don't worry, most of your favorite characters will make an appearance in this story... eventually.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Chapter 2_
> 
> **Author:** Carla, aka cali-chan  
>  **Rating:** PG-13.  
>  **Genre:** Family, friendship, drama, romance, probably some humor because "oh, small town charm" and on top of that, these characters are all sassmasters (that's why we love 'em).  
>  **Pairings:** All the canon pairings (...eventually).  
>  **Canon/timeline:** AU, inspired by the TV show _Everwood_ (why yes, I find connections to my fandoms _everywhere_. It's a gift).
> 
> **Disclaimer:** I only hid Percy in my closet for a couple of nights. It's not kidnapping if I sent him back, right? (AKA: PJO/HoO don't belong to me, they're all RR's).

"I'm just saying, if I were Percy's age..."  
  
"You're _married_."  
  
"It's an expression!" Poseidon leaned back in his chair, putting his hands behind his head as he let the feeling of fullness course through his body; Sally had always been an excellent cook. "All I'm saying is: she was very pretty. You should go for it, son."  
  
Percy scoffed and shook his head in annoyance. "That's it, I'm out of here." He pushed his chair back so abruptly that it screeched against the hardwood floors. He stood up, threw his napkin down on his plate and turned on his heel, walking away from the dining room table.  
  
" _Percy_..." Sally called out to him, trying to get him to stay, but he ignored her attempt and disappeared into the back of the house, presumably to lock himself in his room. She shook her head, somewhat amused. "I hate to be the stereotypical embarrassing mother, but... was there really a girl?" she leaned toward Poseidon as if that would make it easier to hear the gossip.  
  
Percy had never really had a girlfriend before; he'd always been more of a homebody and with Tyson, swimming, and all the problems in school he'd had, he always found it hard to mesh well with the other kids. As a mother, she couldn't help but be excited that he liked a girl in his grade. Maybe that would help him adapt better.  
  
"Yeah, I saw him staring at her as he came out of the school," Poseidon nodded with a chuckle. "Seemed pretty besotted... not that he'd ever tell me anything, of course." The mirth in his tone seemed to fizzle out as he added the last phrase, and Sally felt sad. It didn't take a super detective to notice that things were tense between the two of them during dinner, and she wished it didn't have to be that way. Her son deserved to have a good relationship with his father.  
  
"Well, he didn't want to move," she posed the obvious reason. "I think it's understandable that he's upset with you." She patted Poseidon's hand in what she hoped was a comforting manner and stood up herself, taking the now empty dishes so she could put them in the dishwasher. Tyson was already lost in his own world while playing on his portable video game console, so she didn't worry that the turn the conversation had taken would be confusing for him.  
  
"If his completely shutting me out is a sign that he's upset with me, then Percy has been 'upset with me' since the day he was born," Poseidon retorted. He could be oblivious, but Sally knew he wasn't a fool: he knew that Percy had never forgiven him for not divorcing his wife, and perhaps indirectly for all the crap they went through with Gabe. She knew he understood where Percy's anger came from, and she knew he felt guilty about not being there for them, but he had told her repeatedly about his belief that there had to come a time when Percy finally understood his reasons and left the past behind.  
  
She knew it was going to take time, though. "He's always just wanted you to be around," she told him sincerely. Percy might act like he didn't want to see Poseidon ever again, but Sally knew there was more to it. Percy was very stubborn, and he felt abandoned by his father for years; he wasn't going to allow himself to feel rejected by him again. He would push Poseidon away before Poseidon could cast _him_ aside. It was a defense mechanism. "Isn't that part of the reason why you wanted us to move here? So you could come visit them more freely?"  
  
She put the last dish in the dishwasher and, closing it with a snap, she leaned against the counter, watching Poseidon's reaction carefully. "So keep coming by. Eventually Percy will get used to the idea that you really want to be part of his life. It'll just take time."  
  
He didn't reply, but instead looked down at the table, pensive. Sally could see she'd given him food for thought. While he sorted things out on his own, she walked back to the table and sat beside Tyson, who eagerly described the video game he was playing (one Poseidon had brought for him that morning) and happily boasted about all the levels he'd managed to beat in just one day. Sally didn't understand most of it, but like any good mother would, she dutifully oohh-ed and aahh-ed when required.  
  


.  
.  
.

Percy's second day of classes— much like the first one— started off on the wrong foot.

To start off, his alarm clock abruptly woke him up in the middle of a dream about Annabeth... a very _nice_ dream, if the state of his sheets was any indication. Unfortunately, that meant he had to take time out of the morning rush to go wash his sheets before his mother noticed his little... accident.

And because of course he's not _that_ lucky, his mother walked in just as he was pouring the detergent, and she was understandably confused: Percy did help her with the laundry sometimes, but never at seven thirty in the morning. He managed to scramble up a very, very poor excuse ("I, uh, I accidentally cut my elbow and I got blood on my sheets and I didn't want it to stain but it's okay, I can take care of it myself, really, you don't need to even come close to these sheets at all"), but by some divine miracle, his mother actually bought it.

By the time he managed to convince her it was just a scrape and that he really didn't need her to take him to the hospital, however, he was already running late for school. The one day he was desperate enough to accept his father's offer of a ride to school was the one day Poseidon wasn't around (so what else is new), but then his mother introduced him to their new neighbor, Mr. Blowfish— sorry, _Blofis_ — and after one relatively awkward car ride, Percy thankfully made it to first period on time.

The rude awakening caught up with him quickly, though (and the fact that their history teacher was so. Incredibly. _Dull_. Certainly didn't help). He spent most of the morning either fighting sleep or flat-out snoring, bent forward and resting his head down on his desk.

You wouldn't think it, but that's when his day started looking up. Of course, Percy didn't know that until he felt someone poke him in the shoulder and he looked up through bleary eyes to see Annabeth looking down at him, one delicate sandy blond eyebrow arched up on her forehead. For a moment Percy thought she was going to chastise him for conking out in class (it just seemed like something she would do). Instead she said, "You drool when you sleep."

Percy tried to prod his brain into saying something snappy, straighten up his posture or at least wipe the damn drool off his cheek, but in his still somnolent state the only thing he could possibly do was mutter "Huh?"

She rolled her eyes at him. "We've got lunch now." She lightly tugged at his sleeve, like she wanted to emphasize the idea that class was over and he needed to get out of the classroom. "Come on, I want to show you something." She didn't wait for him to respond but instead sprinted out of the room, her blond hair flying behind her.

Percy was still half asleep, but he had enough presence of mind to know that when the girl of your dreams asks you to go somewhere with her, you don't say no. As quickly as his tired body allowed it, he picked up his backpack and followed her out the door.

If Annabeth's sudden request didn't wake him up fully, the biting cold sure did— she led him out of the building and into the patch of forest that was directly behind school grounds. Having just moved to Elysium, Percy had no idea how big this forest was or what was in it, and Annabeth wasn't giving him any hints. He even jokingly asked if she was taking him to a place in the woods where she could kill him and hide the body where it would never be found, but she only gave him a _look_ and shook her head, not even slowing down.

He relaxed a bit when he saw that she was following a trail. (Hey, he might be a city boy but even he had heard of hiking trails... in movies...). All the smartass quips he had ready to fire just fizzled away in his mind when they finally came to a large clearing. Right in the middle of it, almost cradled by the shadow of the trees, was a lake— not particularly big, but large enough that Percy could see the townspeople using it for recreation. It was completely frozen over, reflecting the light of the sun above their heads, and in the complete silence and stillness of the moment, it felt almost like a scene from a movie. It took Percy's breath away.

"This is Lake Lerna," Annabeth signaled at the landscape in front of them with wide open arms. "Thankfully no multi-headed reptiles are going to pop out of this one, not that a few pranksters with nothing better to do haven't tried..." she muttered under her breath.

Percy had no clue what she was talking about, but he was too entranced by the lake to comment either way. Something about it just drew him in. Perhaps it was pure muscle memory; even before he started swimming for sport, he'd always loved the water. Large bodies of water always made him think back to simpler days... spending a weekend at the beach in Montauk with his mother, watching the sea on the Coney Island Boardwalk while eating a corndog with Tyson, or attending summer camp right by the Long Island Sound. He knew this would sound stupid if he said it out loud, but it was almost like he could hear the water below that layer of ice calling out to him. He started walking toward it, wanting to take a closer look.

"The founders of this town were originally from the Salt Lake Valley," Annabeth continued speaking, thankfully not realizing that Percy was only half-paying attention. "They have a Mount Olympus over there, you know. I guess they just decided to keep with the Greek theme. Or maybe they just looked around and thought: 'This is what heaven must look like.'" She shrugged, wrapping her coat a little bit tighter around herself. "Not sure I'd say that about the town itself, but this place... it's really beautiful, isn't it?"

"Yeah," Percy's agreement came out as a whisper. Now standing right at the lake shore, he crouched down, stretching out a hand to hover close to the ice, almost in reverence.

"Careful," Annabeth's voice warned from behind him. "I don't think the ice is thick enough to hold your weight yet." Before he even noticed, she was standing right beside him. "It will be, though. In the heart of winter, the kids from Greek Hill like to come here after school to skate, or just hang out. Even in the summer, many people from town come take a swim, barbecue, or just relax by the water." She took a deep breath, as if taking in as much of the chilly mountain air as she could. "What do you think?"

He was quiet for a few more seconds, still taking everything in, but eventually he stood up. "I hadn't realized how much I missed the water until I had it right in front of me," he admitted. As much as it made him miss New York, the lake also had a kind of calming effect on him. Now that he knew this little oasis existed in Elysium, it was like a weight had been lifted off his shoulders.

Annabeth looked at him from the corner of her eye with something akin to comprehension in her expression. "Must be hard to come from living right at the coast, to landlocked Colorado," she posed. And she wasn't wrong. There was a bit more to it than that, but he figured the distance from the ocean was a large part of why he was finding it so difficult to adapt.

"You have no idea," he muttered, putting his hands inside his pockets. He had to go and touch the ice, didn't he? Now his hands were freezing.

She nudged him with her shoulder. "Come on, let's go sit on one of the benches," she suggested. She went on ahead and— after wiping away the frost on the surface— sat on the nearest bench. Percy took one more short moment at the edge of the lake before joining her on the bench.

After a heartbeat of awkward silence, Percy finally decided to ask the question that had been lingering in the back of his mind since she woke him up in the History classroom. "So... why did you bring me here?"

She shrugged, the end of her blonde curls bouncing on her shoulders. "It's one of my favorite places in town. I think everyone should know about it."

"Yeah, but you don't bring just anyone with you, right?" he retorted smartly. "You don't really seem like the tour-guide-slash-welcoming-committee type."

"Oh, you've got me all pegged down, haven't you?" she replied, her expression amused. Percy really liked how her gray eyes crinkled in the corners, even if she was trying to hide her mirth. "So, which type am I, then?"

"Ah, you know," he started, jokingly trying to make it sound like her 'type' wasn't anything special, "Head-of-student-council type, scholarships-to-all-the-Ivies type, running-for-public-office type..."

"I do count becoming President of the World as one of my greatest aspirations," she nodded solemnly, but then she couldn't keep her face straight and let out a short laugh. _Go, Jackson! You're on a roll!_ he mentally congratulated himself.

"Seriously, though," he added, "I don't know how things work around here, but in my experience, girls like you don't hang out with guys like me." He didn't necessarily mean that as self-deprecating, but to him it was mostly a fact. With his ADHD that made it hard to hold interest, his dyslexia that made him feel stupid on a regular basis, or the mess that was his family, he never felt he could relate to other kids his age, let alone girls.

Heck, it was entirely a miracle that he had managed _this_ conversation with Annabeth without doing something stupid like tripping her, or worse. He might not be terrible to look at, but he'd never been particularly smooth. "You seem like you have enough friends, and I'm just some random new kid who falls asleep in class and has a mouth that's too smart for his own good."

"Well, at least there's _one_ part of you that's smart," she pointed out with a tilt of her head. Her tone was clearly teasing, so he didn't take offense. "Here's the thing: I've lived in Elysium my whole life. I've hardly been outside Colorado. Oh, you don't know what I would give to visit New York! Those buildings! All those structures! It must be so amazing," she added, hands clenched into fists like she was trying to contain her emotion. And yeah, Percy loved New York, and there were some really tall buildings there, but to him they were just... buildings. What was _in_ them was what really made the city what it was, if you asked him. Still, she was clearly passionate about this, so he didn't comment.

"Anyway," she shook herself, realizing she'd run off on a tangent, "I know everyone and everything there is to know in this town. Always the same places, always the same faces; I know what to expect from Elysium. There's hardly ever any change, and we don't get new people here often. I think the last time someone new came was when the Zhangs moved here from Canada, and that was _ages_ ago," she added with something of a grimace. "And while Frank is a really sweet guy, he's not terribly interesting."

She turned over on the bench so she was looking straight at him rather than just sitting beside him. "I don't know what it is about you, Percy Jackson, but you seem... different... from everyone else around here. Different in a good way, I mean. I keep wishing that something will happen to break the boring monotony of small-town living... maybe you'll be the one."

"Wow, that's quite a weight on my shoulders," he commented, but deep down he was flattered. If she liked different, then maybe she could grow to like _him_.

"No pressure," she replied with a small smirk on her lips.

He couldn't keep down a smile of his own, and he leaned back against the bench, feeling proud of himself for sustaining a decent conversation with his crush for once. "I'm glad you brought me here," he said, turning back to look at the lake again. There really was something about this place, an energy to it he had been missing without realizing it. "Thanks. Really!"

"It's no big deal," she said with an unconcerned shrug. "Besides, word on the street is the rest of Eustace's little gang are out for your blood because you got him expelled. Thought I'd go for my one good deed of the week. You might want to avoid having lunch in the cafeteria for the next few days, though."

He let out a deep, frustrated groan. Of course he already had people gunning for his head on the second day of class. So what else was new? "Story of my life," he muttered under his breath. He heard her snicker at his overblown reaction; at least one good thing had come out of him putting his foot in his mouth once again. "Guess I have to thank you for saving me today, then."

She returned his smile. "I'm sure it won't be the last time."

To his smitten ears it sounded like she was implying they'd do this again, but he tried not to read into it too much. He didn't do much reading into things. He didn't do much reading, period. As he clearly demonstrated with his next brilliant question: "So what was that you were saying about giant snakes?"

Luckily for his self-confidence, she rolled her eyes in amusement but otherwise did not offer any subjective comments about his dumb question. He mentally high-fived himself. "Not a snake, exactly; a reptile. Do you know the story of Hercules and the Hydra?"

"Like that _Captain America_ thing?" He knew Hercules, of course, but he had no idea what the other thing was. Still, he shrugged just so she would continue her explanation. He liked hearing her talk, even about things he didn't understand.

She chuckled and shook her head. "There was this terrible creature that had its lair in the original lake Lerna..."

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They split up as they reached the school, Percy rushing inside because Mr. Blofis, one of the school's English teachers, has asked to meet with him before lunch was over. (They had to agree on where to meet at the end of the day so he could give Percy a ride back home). With a few minutes to go until the bell rang, Annabeth decided to look for her friends to hang out for a bit.

She didn't have to look far: Thalia and Jason were standing near the entrance to the school, waiting for her. And they— or at least Thalia— didn't look particularly happy. She guessed it had something to do with her coming back from the forest with Percy.

She approached them quickly, already feeling her hackles rise out of defensiveness. "What?" she stated, more than asked, as Thalia fixed an accusing look at her. She put her hands on her hips, refusing to be intimidated. She had done nothing wrong.

"I know what you're up to," Thalia replied, electric blue eyes narrowing at her. Thalia had always been so intense, Annabeth thought, she looked at people like she knew all their secrets— or rather like she was certain she could drag them out of them somehow.

Luckily for her, she'd been best friends with Thalia Grace her entire life, and she was more than immune to it by now. "I hate to point this out, but it's not a crime for me to hang out with other people," she retorted smartly.

Thalia let out a huff. "Don't take me for an idiot, Annabeth." She crossed her arms and shifted her hips, a frown now adorning her glare. "You and I both know that you're not hanging out with the new kid out of the goodness of your heart. You have an agenda."

Now Annabeth was frowning right back at her. "Wow, I had no idea you saw me as such a mean girl, Thalia." She shook her head in disbelief. "Even if I _did_ have an agenda— which I am _not_ admitting to— that doesn't mean I don't genuinely want to be friends with him. And anyway, I would've expected you to be my number one supporter when it came to this supposed agenda of mine. So why am I getting the third degree, here?"

The question took Thalia aback for a second, and Jason used that pause to jump into the conversation. "What Thalia's trying to say," he started, looking at her with the same electric blue eyes as his sister (though thankfully on him they were a lot less hostile), "is that things have already been painful enough. We don't want you getting in over your head."

She knew Jason's concern was sincere, and she appreciated it, but she thought they were both overreacting. "Come on, I know exactly what I'm doing," she replied with a shake of her head. "I'm my mother's daughter, after all."

"Your _mother_ is going to _blow a fuse_ if she finds out you've been hanging around with _that_ guy," Thalia interjected in a dark tone, and Annabeth had to admit she had a point.

She wasn't going to let that possibility deter her, though. "That's why she's not going to find out," she stated, giving her two best friends a very pointed look. Jason seemed resigned while Thalia's mouth drew into a tight line. "We should go in now," Annabeth added before the dark-haired girl could raise any more objections. "Bell's about to ring, and we don't want to be late."

Jason, who was as much a stickler for punctuality as she was, quickly agreed and they both started making their way into the building. Thalia stood there glaring for a couple more seconds, before rushing to catch up with them, muttering something about being surrounded by goody-two-shoes under her breath until she reached the physics classroom.

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Percy got a ride home with Mr. Blof— sorry, Paul ("It's okay to call me by my first name as long as we're outside of class, I guess. We _are_ neighbors, after all")— but unfortunately, he still had to see Poseidon at dinner. He didn't even know what his father was still doing in Elysium. Didn't he have, like, important stuff requiring his presence in New York? A wife to buy diamonds for, interviews to give, people to save... all those things that had generally always been more important than his children?

At least he managed to keep his forced interaction with his father to a minimum by focusing on telling Tyson about his trip to the lake. He didn't want the teasing to start all over again, so he avoided mentioning Annabeth; instead, he made the whole thing really vague, hoping they'd assume Grover took him there or something.

It really didn't matter, though, as Tyson hung onto his every word, more excited by the idea of the lake than about how Percy learned of it. "Were there lots of people swimming?" he asked, leaning forward in his chair, his eyes wide.

"Nah, it's been snowing, remember? The lake's already frozen over." Percy rested his head against his fist, smiling at his brother's enthusiasm. It was easy to make Tyson happy, and Percy was always glad for it. "I'm sure it'll be full of people by spring, though."

Tyson smiled brilliantly. "Can you take me, brother? I wanna see the lake!"

"Sure, big guy," he said, giving Tyson a pat on the shoulder. "We'll go this weekend."

Sally got up and started picking up everyone's empty plates. "If you really want to go swimming, I'm sure Percy can get you permission to use the school pool every once in a while," she suggested, walking around the table with her hands full on the way to the sink.

"Ah, that's right! The swim team was one of the reasons why we chose this school for you," Poseidon interjected as if he'd only just remembered. He also used the word "we" as if he had ever had a hand in Percy's education other than to sign the checks. "Have you talked to the Coach about that yet, son?"

"I'm not joining the swim team," he muttered in a low voice, then abruptly got up from his chair to take his own plate to his mother in hopes they would ignore that little piece of news. He quickly dumped what little remnants of food were still on the plate into the garbage, getting the plate ready for the dishwasher.

He wasn't looking at either of his parents but he could practically _feel_ their confused glances on the back of his neck. "Percy!" his mother's concerned tone pulled at him, and he had to turn and look at her anyway when he handed her the plate. "Why not? You love competing."

"Yeah, well, there's no point if I can't win." He started the phrase looking earnestly at his mother, not wanting to upset her, but when the second half of the sentence rolled around he'd turned to glare straight at Poseidon.

The older man was immediately defensive, a frown marring his tanned features. "Hey, I never said you can't win," he retorted defensively, once again completely refusing to even contemplate the idea that it was all his fault that Percy's life had been hopelessly upended.

"Sure, just not _too_ much, right?" Percy shot back, his tone hard. Tense silence followed, Poseidon clearly finding no way to refute that claim.

Before his mother— who was still looking at him like she wanted to wrap him up in a warm blanket and sing him a lullaby— could intervene, he dropped the rest of his cutlery in the dishwasher rack and declared, "I'm going to my room." At a brisk pace, he stalked out of the dining room, ignoring everyone's eyes on him and Tyson's confused call.

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"Brother's really mad." Tyson's dismayed comment broke the heavy silence. The younger boy was still looking wide-eyed at Sally, as if expecting her to wave a magic wand and make everyone happy again.

She loved Tyson's innocence, but she could see Poseidon clenching his jaw and resolved to find a way to get the boy out of the living room before an argument erupted. "Yes, he's very upset," she said, quickly looking around the room, expecting an idea to jump out at her. "Actually, you know what's really good when someone's upset?" she added when it finally hit her. "Hot cocoa. Why don't you go get the cinnamon and cocoa powder from the large pantry and we'll make some hot cocoa for everyone?"

Tyson's eyes gleamed with excitement. "Yeah! I like hot cocoa! I can get them." With a bounce in his step that only kids could manage, the boy rushed off toward the back of the house, where the larger pantry where Sally stored her baking goods was.

Her younger son was barely out of the room when Poseidon exploded. "I just can't win with him!" he exclaimed, throwing his hands in the air like the universe was being terribly unfair.

She shook her head, finished putting the dishes in the dishwasher, and closed it with a sigh. "He's still sore about nationals," she started, once again trying to be conciliatory. "Can you blame him? He was really proud of having come that far."

"I thought there would be other competitions!" he threw back angrily. "He's damn talented so of course he's going to keep winning, but now he goes and throws that away— for what, just to spite me?" He got up from his chair and started pacing in front of the window. "You told me to keep trying, and I'm trying— I even canceled some very important appointments and rescheduled my surgeries for two whole weeks just to come here and spend some time with the boys. I was just going to tell him just now!"

"That's— that's not a good idea," Sally interjected quickly. She knew her son, and knew he would take it as a "pity visit" rather than a legitimate attempt to be closer on Poseidon's part. Particularly if Poseidon made it sound like canceling everything in his work schedule to be with his children was a chore. "You have to let him cool down for a while."

"He can't hold this over my head forever," Poseidon signaled at her with his finger, as if emphasizing his point.

"He won't," Sally assured him. Percy had a big heart, and he didn't hold grudges. He'd come around... on his own time. All Poseidon had to do was to make sure not to hurt him again. "Percy loves swimming too much to quit. I'm sure when the season starts, he'll miss it, and he'll go back to it. And once he's swimming again, he'll feel less resentful about leaving New York."

He ran a hand through his hair. He might have his moments of arrogance, but Sally knew that deep down, this bothered him not because of his ego, but because he cared for his children. It just took a bit more prodding for that side of him to come out— and with Percy, the constant friction between them never let it get to that point.

She walked around the kitchen island and sat down in the dinner table chair closest to him. "Come. Sit," she said, patting the empty chair that was beside hers. "Tyson will be back with the ingredients soon, and I think you could use a cup of hot cocoa yourself."

He accepted her invitation, sitting down with a tired sigh. "Things are so much easier with Tyson," he let out, almost in a whine.

Sally chuckled at his childish intonation. She also did not miss the irony of his words. "Tyson sees the world differently than any of us do," she replied, leaning against the backrest of her chair. She stretched her neck; she was still sore from moving around bags of flour yesterday, and the sudden tension at home certainly didn't help. "Percy will come around. You'll see."

Poseidon did not seem convinced. He was still frowning and shaking his head. "Why can't he just be like you and accept that he needs me?"

That comment hit Sally as hard as a punch in the gut. It wasn't the first time she heard him say something like this. Poseidon tended to be self-centered— what Percy liked to call his "god complex"— but through the years Sally had learned to brush it off; there was no sense in getting upset over something that she knew in the long run he didn't really mean. But this time it really rubbed her the wrong way.

That was probably because she was already feeling guilty about Percy's bitterness. There was this nagging feeling inside her telling her she shouldn't have just gone with Poseidon's idea of them moving across the country. She knew Percy wouldn't take it well. It might have been the best solution, but it wasn't necessarily the right one, and every time she saw her son's sullen face, it ate at her. Having Poseidon point out that she'd chosen his financial support over her own integrity wasn't something that made her feel particularly good. " _Excuse_ me?"

He seemed to realize from her tone that she didn't like that comment. He rolled his eyes and waved it off, like it had simply been an unfortunate slip of the tongue. "Oh, come on, Sal. You know I didn't mean it like that. What I'm saying is that you can appreciate the fact that I'm trying to be there for you guys..."

Right, except that wasn't what he said at all. Luckily for him, before he could keep digging himself in further, Tyson came back with the cocoa powder. Sally refused to have arguments in front of Tyson, so she let it go for the moment and they made the hot cocoa as planned. Tyson took Poseidon's attention as he started talking about all the things he liked about Elysium so far, and Sally stayed out of the conversation.

Later she took a cup of cocoa back to Percy's room, where he paused the Youtube video he was watching long enough to apologize to her (not to Poseidon, just to her) for making a scene. Her darling boy; she knew he hated upsetting her just as much as she hated upsetting him.

When they finished their cocoa, she shepherded Tyson to bed. Things weren't as tense between her and Poseidon when he took his leave to go back to his hotel in Denver, but she was still relieved to see him go. Her choices already weighed down on her enough without him reminding her of them.

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Percy's third day of classes seemed to start just as slowly as the previous one had, but right before third period, his luck took a turn. When he went to his locker to switch his books, a small piece of paper fell out, hitting his feet before he realized what it was. Curious, he picked it up. It was a note requesting, in a loopy, cursive handwriting, that he go to the start of the trail behind the school at lunchtime. And it was signed _Annabeth_.

Unable to stop himself from doing a quick happy jig (a freshman who just happened to be walking by looked at him like he'd gone insane, and Percy quickly had to pretend he'd been trying to scratch a particularly unreachable part of his back instead), he pocketed the note and ran off to third period in much better spirits.

As soon as the bell for his lunch period rang, Percy was out the door and heading toward the rendezvous point like a man on a mission. That was probably why, as he made his way out of the school among a throng of people heading in the opposite direction, he completely missed the voice calling out "Jackson! Hey! Jackson!" from somewhere behind him.

He only realized someone was calling his name when a blond boy with glasses caught up to him, trying to get his attention by laying a hand on his shoulder. "Hey," he said, out of breath from running all the way there. Percy recognized him as one of Annabeth's friends. He didn't know his name. "Hi. Percy, right?"

"Yeah, man. You're Annabeth's friend, right? Nice to see you," he started, but it wasn't really an attempt to start a conversation. He continued walking (slower, this time) and the guy kept pace, but it's not like Percy wanted a third wheel in his alone time with Annabeth, so he was just going to have to shake him off kindly. "Listen, um, I actually can't talk right now, I've got to meet someone—"

"I know. You're going to meet up with Annabeth, right?" he interrupted, and Percy's chest filled with dread that maybe Annabeth hadn't intended this to be "alone time" at all, but instead she meant this as a group hangout of sorts. He mentally kicked himself. "Er, she's not going to be there," the guy added, and that gave Percy pause.

"Why? Is she okay?" He didn't have any classes with her that morning, so maybe she'd felt sick and gone home, or maybe she just had to cram for a quiz and was spending her lunch period in the library. Except no teacher would give out a pop quiz on the third day of classes, and Annabeth probably wasn't the type to cram at the last minute anyway. No, that was more Percy's style.

"Oh, no, she's okay," Glasses assured him quickly. "It's just, um, the note you found in your locker? Annabeth didn't write it."

He had the decency to look chagrined, and it was only because of his expression that Percy really understood what he was implying. "Wait, wait," he stopped walking abruptly, and the other boy stopped in tune. They were only a few feet away from the mouth of the trail, anyway. " _You_ wrote the note?" He frowned. "Dude, if you wanted to talk to me that badly you could've just asked. There's no need to fake a girl's handwriting to get my attention."

The guy's confused expression would've been hilarious had Percy not already been halfway to angry. "What? No, no, that's— My sister was the one who wrote it!" He paused for a second, as if an idea had just occurred to him. "But actually, now that you mention it, she does have awfully girly handwriting for someone who's such a tomboy..."

"Right. So while you think about that, I'm just going to go back to the cafeteria—"

"Wait, wait," Glasses grabbed Percy's arm to stop him from going back to the building. "Okay, let me explain what's going on. I'm Jason Grace. My sister's name is Thalia. We've been friends with Annabeth since we were kids." He put his hands inside the pockets of his jacket before he continued speaking. "My sister is the one who wanted to talk to you," he insisted, "but she can be a little... intense. And you seem like a nice enough guy, so I thought maybe I could tell you myself and make it a bit easier on you."

"Appreciate it," Percy nodded, wishing he had worn gloves. Jason's tics had reminded him just how freaking cold it was out today. "Except you're still making it sound like the world is about to implode." Whatever it was Jason had to say, it better be good, because his nervousness was making Percy nervous.

"Right. Sorry." The blond cringed, apparently realizing he was making things sound a lot more dramatic than was probably necessary. "I'll just tell you. Here's the thing: Thalia wants you to stay away from Annabeth."

Percy frowned. Of all things he expected Jason to say, that had definitely not been on the list. "I'm... confused. Am I supposed to back off because your sister is jealous? Are they like dating or something?"

Jason opened his mouth— hopefully to deny the idea— but the voice that cut in was not his. "Of _course_ that would be the first thing you think of." Both boys snapped around to see a girl coming their way. By the blue streaks in her spiky hair, Percy recognized her as Jason's sister, Thalia. "See, this is what I hate about teenage boys: one-track mind, all of them."

Granted, she was probably right, but still Jason frowned, seemingly feeling insulted. "Hey!"

Thalia came to a stop right in front of them and crossed her arms. "Please, little brother," she started, with a roll of her eyes. "As if we don't all know about that double- and triple-password-protected folder you have on your computer that is most likely full of porn. What's it called again? 'Sunday school notes'?"

Jason's ears went red. "That's— Not— I—"

Percy looked at one and then the other with keen interest. He didn't watch that much TV, but the banter between the two siblings was more interesting than most of the reality TV shows that made it to air these days.

It was funny, because at first sight, he would never have assumed these two were related. They were as different as night and day. Jason, with his henley shirts and his blond hair and glasses, looked like the quintessential all-American boy, destined for future greatness. Thalia, with her band t-shirts and her leather jackets and midnight black hair, looked like the girl who graffitied the outside walls of Mr. Future Greatness' house full of anarchy symbols.

On closer inspection, though, he could see the slight similarities that marked them as siblings. The shape of their foreheads was the same, as well as the straightness of their noses. And of course, their blue eyes, which were the exact same electric blue color. That alone was enough of a tell, especially if they were standing next to each other, as they were at that moment.

"Anyway," Thalia turned to Percy when it became clear that Jason could not refute her claims with anything other than mortified babbling. "It's nothing personal, new kid. You just don't know what you're getting into."

He probably didn't, but people telling him what to do was never something that sat well with Percy. "What is this, second grade? It's not like I'm stealing her away from you or anything."

Thalia scowled at him, which, okay, with the sharp eyes and the eyebrow piercing, did look pretty intimidating. "This isn't about me."

"Yeah, you're right, it's about Annabeth," Percy retorted, and he was kinda proud of himself for that one. "And she's a big enough girl to make up her own mind about who she wants to hang out with, don't you think?"

"I'm telling you this for your own good, Jackson," Thalia started, and it sounded enough like a threat that Jason felt the need to jump in at that point.

"What Thalia's trying to say," he intervened in a conciliatory tone, once again attempting to play mediator, "is that... it's pretty obvious you like her. Annabeth, I mean. And we just don't want you to get in over your head."

Percy cringed internally at the word "obvious." He was sure Annabeth probably knew that he was into her, but he'd been trying to be smooth about it. Except he'd never really been good at that. Either way, yes, he liked Annabeth, but it's not like he was going to push her or anything. If all she wanted to be was friends, he was fine with that. He just liked hanging out with her. "Dude, I just want to be her friend," he declared drily.

"There are things about her that you don't know," Jason tried again.

Percy scoffed. "Well isn't that the point of being friends? Getting to know each other with time?" He just really, really didn't get why the Grace siblings wanted him to stay away from Annabeth so bad.

Thalia looked like she'd had enough of his hardheadedness. "Fine then. Since you've become such great friends over the past three days," she spat out the last three words with heavy sarcasm, "then I'm sure she's mentioned her boyfriend, right?"

Percy felt like he'd been punched in the gut. He thought back to the way they sat by the lake the previous day, how open she seemed, those almost-but-not-quite smiles she threw his way... she had to know, right? She had to know that he liked her. "Obvious" was really an understatement. So what, was she just leading him on? Did she enjoy having several guys on strings, vying for her affection?

Maybe it wasn't true. Maybe this was just Thalia trying to force him to back off. Agitated, he turned to look at Jason, hoping he would confirm this theory, but the expression on Jason's face made that hope crumble in a second. The blond looked appropriately disheartened, almost like he wanted to say something to make it better, anything, but couldn't. Thalia looked more steely, but the longer Percy remained quiet while he processed this news, the more she seemed to soften. Percy felt a mix of anger, embarrassment, and despair rolling around in his stomach. Great, now he had two people he just met feeling sad for him.

The anger won out. His jaw clenched. "You know what?" he decided, throwing his hands in the air in an 'I don't care' gesture, "I didn't need an ambush today." Wanting nothing more but to get as far away from their pity as possible, he turned on his heel and made his way back to the school building.

Or he would have, if a buff girl the size of a gorilla wasn't standing in his way.

"You're a hard one to find, new kid," she sneered at him. She had long brown hair, kinda stringy and pulled up in a messy ponytail, beady eyes and biceps Percy was sure were not exaggerated by the sleeves of her jacket. He recognized her from his first day as one of the Bull's friends. Two boys— lankier-looking but then again, everyone would look lanky when standing next to her— were glaring at him, a few steps behind her.

Fan-freaking-tastic. As if his heart wasn't bruised enough, now he was going to get a beating that would make his face match.

"Let it go, Clarisse," came Thalia's voice from behind Percy. She might not like him, but at least it seemed she didn't want him dead. "It wasn't Percy's fault."

"This little twerp got my friend expelled," Clarisse retorted, somehow managing to frown with her entire face. She took a menacing step forward, and Percy didn't move, but he couldn't help but look for the easiest way to dodge any incoming attacks.

Thalia scoffed. "Please, you don't have friends, you have lackeys."

"Thalia, stand back," he heard Jason mutter under his breath. Percy wasn't sure if Jason was concerned for Thalia's safety if Clarisse and her cronies were to jump them, or if he was holding her back from provoking a blow-up to begin with.

"Come on, I can take her," Thalia assured him in a confident— maybe over-confident— tone. She sounded like she'd dealt with the likes of Clarisse before... or maybe she just hated bullies as much as Percy did and knew the trick was not letting them walk all over you.

"Yeah, but not all three of them," Jason pointed out pragmatically. He sounded like a man resigned to pulling his sister back from her rasher tendencies for the rest of his life.

It was Thalia's comment about her not having friends that seemed to anger Clarisse the most. "Shut up, pinecone face!" And, okay, not only was "shut up" the lamest possible retort ever, but also— pinecone face? What even kind of insult was that? Percy knew that people in small towns tended to be more conservative, but _come on_. What was next, monkey head? Poo brain? He had this in the bag; his repertoire of kindergarten insults was infinite.

The snort he couldn't help but let out drew Clarisse's attention back to him. "What are you laughing about, noob?" Her glare could've pierced armor, Percy was sure. "You had such a smart mouth on Monday, now you're letting girls fight your battles?"

Personally, Percy thought girls were quite capable of fighting any battles that presented themselves— Clarisse herself was built like a tank, and Thalia didn't look like the type to take crap from anyone— but he wasn't going to let anyone call him a coward. Clarisse could probably take him down easily, but he wasn't going down without a fight. He was new, and first impressions counted; he wasn't going to be that one dude who got himself beat up like a pansy on his first week of school. That sort of reputation never went away.

He met Clarisse's gaze dead on. "I'm just trying to figure out why you don't go pick on someone your own size," he shrugged. "I mean, I'm sure there are moose in the forest somewhere... oh wait, are they friends of yours, too?" His mind suddenly flashed him a memory of his mother teaching Tyson that male moose were called "bulls" and female moose were called "cows."

Clarisse obviously knew that as well, because she got even angrier. She stepped up until she was directly in his face. "You think you're so funny, don't you?" the words came out as a growl.

"No, I'm just saying, if you all see the entire cow family as, like, your spirit animals, then that explains the sme—" That was as far as he got before Clarisse forcefully pushed him to the ground. He landed on the snow with a grunt. Clarisse's flunkies jeered like it was the funniest thing they'd seen in their entire lives.

Jason moved to help Percy sit up. He glared at the two idiots, but it was really Thalia who kept them back. She walked up to Clarisse, and although Clarisse was a good four or five inches taller and Thalia was much, much leaner, Thalia's confidence was enough to make them seem evenly matched.

"You're an asshole, La Rue," Thalia spat out, eyes narrowed. "Eustace would've gotten himself kicked out for some other stupid reason sooner or later, and you're just taking it out on the new guy because you want to save face."

"Well, geez, I didn't know you felt so strongly about our newest arrival, Grace," Clarisse retorted with a sneer. "I'm sorry, did you want me to stop hurting your new boyfriend? Psh. Wouldn't have thought you'd get over Castellan this quickly..."

"If you don't shut the hell up _right now_ I'm going to punch you so hard it will split your ugly face in two—" Percy had no idea who this Castellan person was, but the mere mention of the name seemed to push Thalia into a full-on rage. She was a second away from jumping Clarisse, they all knew it, and behind him, he could feel Jason ready to spring to his feet if he had to.

Percy's legs were near Clarisse's, and she wasn't paying attention to him now that she thought he was "down for the count." He took advantage of this. Before Thalia could take a swing, he kicked hard at Clarisse's shins (he had really strong legs, swimming was all about the kicking) and broke her balance. She tumbled forward and Thalia, reacting quickly, stepped to the side and added a push of her own. Clarisse fell face-down on the snow with a dull thud.

Thalia moved to make sure Clarisse couldn't stand up, but that's when the minions came at her. Jason let go of Percy to go help his sister, and Percy— once he regained his balance— was about to join in when Clarisse's rage-filled expression stalled him. Her face was full of snow and her hair was sticking to her forehead, and she was looking at Percy with wide, almost crazed eyes. "You're dead, you little maggot!"

She pushed herself up on hands and knees and charged at him. Percy had been in enough problems with bullies through the years that he knew how to fight, and he tried to give as good as he got, but Clarisse was one of the toughest people he'd ever gotten into a scuffle with. When it came to fighting, she knew her stuff. Punches zoomed. Elbows jabbed. Kicks flew. Percy even tried to bite her once, to get out of a chokehold (hey, everything was fair in love and war, right?), but it didn't work.

He was still trying to simultaneously get out of Clarisse's hold and avoid her punches, when he heard a voice that shouldn't have been there at all. "What the hell is going on here?!" Percy looked to the side just in time to see Annabeth effortlessly judo-flip one of the flunkies, who had Jason backed up against a tree.

He knew he was supposed to be mad at her, but he'd be lying if he said that wasn't hot. Unfortunately for him, that was the wrong moment for him to zone out (damn ADHD!), as Clarisse was able to land her first legit punch on his face— smack between his left cheek and eye. He tried to smack her on the face with the back of his head, but although she did let out a few pained groans here and there, she wasn't letting go, despite all his squirming. Her grip was like a freaking python's.

"Hey, Clarisse!" came Annabeth's voice from his left and just as Percy was thinking _There's no way that's going to work_ , it worked: Clarisse turned to look at Annabeth, and Percy took his chance to headbutt Clarisse hard on the nose. She let out a howl of pain and couldn't help but reach for her face, letting Percy go, and once he was free and out of Clarisse's grip, Annabeth spun her around, hard. Percy took advantage of her flailing to pin her arms behind her back, trying to contain her as well as he possibly could. It wasn't easy; Clarisse was _strong_. He had to push her down and put his knee between her shoulder blades to stop her from flinging him off.

"We should call Mr. Brunner," Annabeth suggested. Her blonde hair was all out of place and she was slightly out of breath, and she could not have looked more appealing if she tried.

Fortunately for Percy (who had been about something very embarrassing), Mr. Brunner wasn't in the habit of not knowing what was happening in his school. Or, well, right outside his school. "What in the name of Alexander's mismatched eyes is this barbaric display?" the man exclaimed, coming up to them, fluffy white and gray scarf wrapped tightly around his neck over the lapels of his dark coat. His cane was leaving little holes beside his footprints as he walked through the snow. Professor Blofis, who was walking a few paces behind him, rushed forward to pull Thalia off one of Clarisse's lackeys. Jason and the other minion had stopped fighting a minute before, the former sitting on the snow and trying to catch his breath, while the latter cradled his right arm gingerly.

Several people tried to explain at once, Clarisse's "They were gloating about getting the Bull expelled!" being the loudest one. The mess of voices seemed to annoy their vice-principal even more, though, as he cut everyone off with a sharp "SILENCE!" and an authoritative glare. "We will deal with this in an orderly fashion. Every single one of you make your way to my office, right now!"

As the two teachers started leading them all back to school grounds in a single file, Percy and Annabeth subconsciously hung back a bit. Annabeth nudged him lightly with her elbow. "Guess we make a pretty good team, huh?" She smiled at him as she kept pace beside him.

They really did. Thing was, now that the fight was over, now that the thrill and the adrenaline weren't pumping through his veins, he could clearly remember how upset and betrayed he'd felt just minutes before, and he felt himself getting angry again. He didn't like feeling angry— at least not at anyone who wasn't his father— but at the moment he simply couldn't be all buddy-buddy with her, like nothing had happened. Not right then. So he gave her a hard look over his shoulder and sped up his pace, leaving her behind before he did something he'd regret, like snap at her.

He heard her repeatedly ask if something was wrong, but he pretended he didn't hear her. He had enough things to worry about at that point, like the fact that he was in _so_ much trouble already, and it was only the third day of classes. That had to be some kind of record.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't really have any details to explain in this one, so I'll just say I hope you liked it! Also, thanks to everybody who reviewed, favorited, bookmarked, reblogged, added to alerts or gave kudos to chapter 1. Even if I can't make my appreciation known individually, please know that I see you and am aware of your support! I'd appreciate it a lot if you could do the same with this chapter especially when it comes to reviews; I'm always glad to hear from you guys, and your comments and suggestions always help me with my writing.  
>   
> Chapter 3, which is the conclusion to the first "episode," will be up next weekend. After that, I'm not sure; I have to watch episode 2 of _Everwood_ before I actually start watching chapter 4, and I haven't really had time to do that yet.  
>   
>  But either way, stay tuned to my Tumblr (girls-are-weird) as I'll be sure to post snippets and excerpts from it if I do start writing it. That's the sure-fire way to know if a new chapter will be posted soon! Thanks, and see you next week. :)


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Chapter 3_
> 
> **Author:** Carla, aka cali-chan  
>  **Rating:** PG-13.  
>  **Genre:** Family, friendship, drama, romance, probably some humor because "oh, small town charm" and on top of that, these characters are all sassmasters (that's why we love 'em).  
>  **Pairings:** All the canon pairings (...eventually).  
>  **Canon/timeline:** AU, inspired by the TV show _Everwood_ (why yes, I find connections to my fandoms _everywhere_. It's a gift).
> 
> **Disclaimer:** I only hid Percy in my closet for a couple of nights. It's not kidnapping if I sent him back, right? (AKA: PJO/HoO don't belong to me, they're all RR's).

_You should see the other guy_ only really worked when the other guy was actually around, Percy mused as he sat, bored out of his skull, on a bench outside the vice-principal's office.  
  
Soon after the group had arrived there and their parents had been called, Clarisse's biker dad had parked his Harley outside the office and, not even bothering to get off the bike or come into the building, had demanded Mr. Brunner tell him (through the window) what his daughter had done to get herself in trouble, barking out a loud laugh and a "that's my girl!" when Mr. Brunner explained she'd been fighting on school grounds. After snapping at Clarisse to "get a move on, we've got monster truck tickets!" father and daughter rode away on the Harley, leaving Mr. Brunner muttering to himself about irresponsible adults. The two minions had been picked up by their respective parents soon after.  
  
And so Percy was left waiting with Annabeth and the two Graces, with no one to point the finger at when his own mother arrived to give him the lecture of a lifetime. Jason was sitting beside him on the bench, looking equally glum and nursing a large bruise on his jaw to match Percy's black eye. Annabeth and Thalia were standing on the opposite side of the secretary's desk, at some points discussing something heatedly in a low tone and at others simply keeping silent. Thalia didn't show any visible signs of having been in a fight, other than a small cut on her forehead which had been quickly patched up by the school nurse. Annabeth looked just like she did every other day.  
  
He had been humming under his breath that Katy Perry song that Tyson had been singing all morning— because it was stuck in his head and he needed to find _some_ way to pass the time— when Jason nudged him with his elbow. "Hey, Jackson." Percy lazily turned to look at the blond. "Listen, I... I just wanted to say I'm sorry. When I went looking for you earlier, I really was only trying to help. I didn't know any of this would happen."  
  
Percy gave the boy's words some thought. While Thalia had made no secret of the fact that she didn't like him very much, Jason did seem sincere. And they'd helped him when Clarisse showed up, so he figured that counted enough to make them even. It's not like it was Jason's fault that Annabeth had a boyfriend, anyway (unless he was the boyfriend— oh shit, wait, was he the boyfriend?), so it didn't feel like he had a legitimate reason to be mad. At him, anyway.  
  
"...Are you the boyfriend?" Okay, he just had to make sure.  
  
Jason blinked, like such a thing had never even occurred to him. "What? No, no. She's like a second sister to me." It was his expression more than his words that convinced Percy— he seemed so genuinely befuddled by the mere idea. "So, uh, are we cool?"  
  
Percy responded with a one-shoulder shrug. "No worries, man. We're cool."  
  
"Awesome." Jason started to smile and then cringed, apparently remembering a little too late that his bruised jaw was still tender. "Hey, we should hang out sometime. I could introduce you to some people," he suggested eagerly.  
  
"Yeah, sure," Percy conceded. So long as said hangout did not include Jason's sister and his "second sister," he was all up for it. He was just about to make a comment about it when his summoned parent walked through the door of the office— except it wasn't the parent he'd been expecting. "What are you doing here?" he blurted out.  
  
Poseidon's eyes zeroed in on his son with some relief. "Percy! Are you okay? What happened? Your mother's going out of her mind with worry..."  
  
Already starting to feel tense— this was the second time Poseidon dropped in on him unexpectedly _at his school_ , and that was two times too many as far as Percy was concerned— he stood up from the bench, picking up his backpack and slinging it over his shoulder. "If she was so worried, maybe she should've come get me herself," he muttered, keenly aware that all three of his classmates AND the secretary had their attention fixed on their exchange.  
  
"She can't leave Tyson by himself and you know that," Poseidon replied, moving closer so that he could take a look at Percy's eye. "And this would've only made her even more worried— have you been _fighting_?"  
  
"Wow, you think? I'm glad your medical degree is useful for something."  
  
"Son, we've talked about you getting into fights at school—"  
  
"Look, can you just sign me out already? I don't think any of these people are interested in all the self-righteous lectures you've given me through the years," Percy signaled around them.  
  
Understanding dawned in Poseidon's eyes when he saw the four pairs of eyes hanging onto their every word. "Right. But we'll talk about this on the way home," he sentenced, promptly turning to the secretary to ask for the paperwork he needed to sign in order to get Percy home.  
  
About a minute later, as the secretary was explaining to him how this incident could be registered on Percy's record, a woman walked in, catching everyone's attention. She had long, loosely curly hair and she was wearing a very business-like, gray pantsuit. "I'm sorry, I got a call saying something happened with my kids..." she started, but her voice trailed when she saw the girls standing by the secretary's desk. "Annabeth!" Even though her hair was dark, Percy need only take one look at her eyes to know who she was.  
  
"Mom," Annabeth started, looking uncomfortable. "I can explain..."  
  
"All you three had better tell me exactly what is happening here," the woman replied, her tone very no-nonsense. "Never, in all your years of schooling, have I ever received a disciplinary call for any of you, and now all of a sudden the school calls to tell me you all were caught in the middle of a fistfight? What is going on? Oh, excuse me—" she said, when she bumped into Poseidon in her eagerness to reach her daughter.  
  
"Minerva Chase?" Poseidon inquired, looking at the woman intently, as if he wasn't sure if he had the right person. When she turned around, though, recognition was clear in his expression. "It is you! Wow, small world, isn't it?" he added with a bright grin.  
  
The woman did not reciprocate the sentiment; after her initial shock at her name being called unexpectedly, she fixed her gaze on the man, a flicker of recognition giving way to a deep frown. "Oh, I should've known!" she groaned out loud. She shook her head. "As soon as I heard that your... progeny was moving to Elysium I just knew, I knew it was going to be nothing but trouble."  
  
Percy frowned in confusion. "Wait. Do you two know each other?" He didn't think his father even knew of the existence of Elysium before that fateful day he randomly found it on a map, let alone knew someone who lived there. And she knew they were father and son. How could she know that?  
  
"Oh," Thalia interjected from the side of the room, "did we forget to mention that your father and Annabeth's mother are mortal enemies? Oops," she added, not sounding terribly sorry.  
  
He turned to look at Annabeth, but she avoided his gaze. Then he turned to Poseidon for an explanation, but his father was too busy trying to placate the older woman. "Listen, I'm sure this is all just a misunderstanding," Poseidon continued speaking with what Percy knew he thought to be a charming smile on his lips. From Minerva's expression, she clearly was thinking of a more scathing adjective for it. "Someone said the wrong thing, fists started flying... kids will be kids. They'll all be best friends again in no time, am I right?"  
  
"You're wrong, but then again, that's hardly surprising," Minerva retorted and damn, if she wasn't glaring at him just as darkly as she was at his father, he might actually like the woman. Anyone who could burn Poseidon like that was awesome in his book. "Now, I would appreciate you keeping your brats away from my daughter and my wards from now on, unless you want your stay in Elysium to be a very difficult one." She hastily grabbed the sheets of paper the secretary had put down on the desk just a few seconds previous. "I'll fax these in from home. Let's go, you three."  
  
She stalked out of the office like she owned the place. Thalia swung the strap of her messenger bag across her torso and walked out of the room without a word. Jason stood up from the bench, carrying his own bag in his hand, and muttered a "good luck" at Percy as he walked by him. Annabeth hung back for a bit longer. Percy stared at her as if daring her to explain all of this, but she only guiltily held his gaze for a couple of seconds before looking down at the ground and following Jason out the door.  
  


.  
.  
.

"...And I get it if you have to fight to defend yourself, but sooner or later you're gonna have to come up with a better strategy to avoid getting into these messes, because you can't just keep moving from school to school every year. Eventually they just won't take you!"

Poseidon had been lecturing him since the moment they got in the car until the moment they stopped in front of the house. Not that Percy was at all surprised; the man did love the sound of his own voice. It wasn't anything he hadn't heard from his mother a thousand times through the years, and it only made him angrier that Poseidon was bringing up these arguments eleven years too late, so he tuned him out before he got too into his tirade.

In fact, it was only the sudden silence at the end of his "fatherly speech" that made Percy realize they'd arrived. "What?" he asked, noticing that Poseidon was looking at him like he was expecting an answer to a question. He just didn't know what the question was.

"So?" Poseidon prompted. "What do you have to say for yourself? If you're going to go in there and explain to your mother what happened, you'd better sound contrite about it."

"Guess I can't, 'cause I don't know what 'contrite' means," Percy muttered, flippantly. His jaw clenched as he glared back at the older man.

Poseidon let out a sigh of pure suffering, which only made Percy want to roll his eyes. "You know, when you guys moved out here I thought you'd change. Smaller town, smaller school— I thought you'd finally stop it with the fighting and the smart mouth."

Percy scoffed. "You thought _I'd_ change? This is all _your_ fault!" He angrily pulled on the handle to open the car door, muttering "asshole" under his breath.

Poseidon clearly heard him, though, and threw the driver's side door open so he could walk around the back of the car. "You can't talk to me like that, I'm your father!"

Now Percy did roll his eyes. "Sure you are, when there's something in it for you!" He threw the strap of his bag over his shoulder and stomped his way to the curb, so he was facing the man directly. "You lie to my mom to get her to sleep with you, then you ignore us for twelve years, you run around thinking you're some kinda player, and when your awful wife finally reads you the riot act, your best idea is to send us away from _our home_ like we have something to be ashamed of, when we did _nothing_ wrong. And _I'm_ the one that needs to change?"

"What is going on here?" Sally must've heard their raised voices all the way to the living room, because she peeked out the front door of the house, a concerned expression on her face.

"Everything I've done in the past few years has been trying to give you and your mother a better life, but you obviously can't appreciate a good thing when you see it," Poseidon replied as he clicked the car alarm on, throwing some of that flippancy back to Percy. Unfortunately, that "smart mouth" he alluded to earlier was something he'd inherited from him.

"How is completely messing up our lives something good?" Percy was on a roll. "You only get away with all this bullshit because Mom is too nice to tell you what we're really thinking, and that is that you have no place in this family! We don't need you _or_ want you around!"

"Percy!" Sally exclaimed, admonishing, as she made her way out of the house to the two arguing men. "Do not speak to your father that way!"

"No, no, let him get it out," Poseidon prompted, now visibly angry. "Don't hold back, Percy, why don't you tell me how you _really_ feel!" he added, challenging.

Percy didn't back down for a second. "Oh yeah, I'll tell you how I really feel: I _hate_ you!" Not even his mother's shocked expression was enough to chastise him. Mad as hell, he turned on his heel and trampled through the snowy yard toward the side of the house, where his bike was parked.

"Yeah, well I hate you too, you little ingrate!" Poseidon sniped at his retreating back.

" _Poseidon_!" Sally turned to the older man, scandalized. She didn't have enough time to chastise him any further, though, as she turned her attention back on Percy, who was pulling out his bicycle. "Percy, what are you doing— you just _got_ here!"

"I'm not staying here while _he_ is," Percy shot back, taking his time to get on the bike without his bag falling off his shoulders. "I'll be back later," he threw over his shoulder as he pedaled away down the street.

"Would you just come back here so we can talk about this?" he heard Sally try again, but he was already far enough away that he could pretend not to have heard her.

.  
.  
.

Watching her son disgruntledly pedal away from her for the second time that week, Sally sighed. She turned to Poseidon. "What just happened?"

"Your son is being a brat, that's what happened," Poseidon retorted, almost in a growl, pointing with a stretched arm in the direction Percy had left in, as if saying "Exhibit A."

" _He's_ being a brat? You just told him you hated him!" Sally retorted, incredulously. She knew Poseidon understood very little about parenting— years of attempting to co-parent to various degrees of success had taught her that— but she had figured he at least knew the main cardinal rule: never ever even imply that you don't love your children.

"He'll get over it eventually," he waved her off, throwing her own advice back at her as he walked around her in a rush to get to the other side of the car.

"He's a teenager; they don't just 'get over' things like these, and you should know that better than anyone," she admitted, feeling like she was tipping somewhere between angry and worried. Percy was a good kid, and usually when he was given enough time he'd calm down enough to make peace about most things, but this was pushing it.

She knew Poseidon's relationship with his own father was rocky at best. The man had been psychologically and physically abusive and Sally suspected that a lot of Poseidon's most difficult attributes could be directly traced to that. At the same time, she could see that he wanted to be a better father to Percy and Tyson than his own father had been to him; they'd talked about it several times over the years, and she believed him. And while he hadn't been the greatest father ever, he'd never given her any reason to think that he might repeat his father's pattern. But this might be too much to come back from. She hated to bring up that card, but it had to be done.

Clearly understanding what she was suggesting, he stopped and frowned, almost as if he was offended. "Sometimes you have to be tough on them. Discipline them," he insisted, as if that was a good enough reason for his appalling behavior.

"Yes, within reason!" she replied, hands extended at her sides as if for emphasis. "You're supposed to be the adult here! You should know where to draw the line."

He scoffed. "You coddle him too much!" Shaking his head, he turned around and kept his stride toward the driver's side of the car.

Seeing him open the door and sit on the driver's seat, she went into high alert. "What are you doing?"

"Going back to my hotel," he snapped back at her, like the answer was obvious.

Sally wished him leaving at a time like this was some kind of uncharacteristic behavior, but if there was one thing Poseidon did well, it was run away from his problems. "You can't leave. You need to be here so you and Percy can talk about this."

"We both know he won't come near the house if he sees me parked here, and quite frankly, I'm already getting sick of the lecture," he was once again dismissive of her concerns. He buckled his seat belt and moved to put the key in the ignition. "I'll be in Denver if you need me."

"You can't just go! You have to apologize—" She was cut off by the sound of the car door slamming closed and the ignition starting. "Poseidon!" She tried again, but he was already speeding down the street.

With a huff of frustration, she turned to go back to her house. As she took a step onto the sidewalk, she noticed her neighbor— Mr. Blofis, was it?— was standing on his porch, and had probably witnessed the entire miserable encounter. "Nothing but love in the Jackson household, as you can see," she tried to joke with a feeble smile, wrapping her arms around herself as it hit her that she had once again walked out of her house without a decent jacket.

Mr. Blofis' smile was just as uncomfortable as expected in this situation. "Would you like some coffee? I just brewed a pot," he offered. She wasn't sure if that was just a deflection or if he was giving her an out from this surely awkward circumstance. "I could take a cup to your house so you wouldn't have to leave your son by himself, too," he added, pointing toward her house, where (she only just noticed) Tyson was standing under the door frame, peeking out at her worriedly.

Not wanting to seem rude— but in a hurry to run home and reassure her youngest that everything was okay despite all the yelling— she nodded. "I think I'll take that cup. Give me five minutes, maybe?"

.  
.  
.

After explaining to Tyson that no, his father and brother didn't hate each other, and once they both came back home for dinner they would sit down and talk it out and be happy again, Sally and Mr. Blofis— "Just call me Paul, please"— finally sat down at the kitchen table. Sally procured some cinnamon cookies she had baked that morning, and Paul poured two cups of hot coffee from a thermos.

As she picked hers up, she took a moment to bask in the warm scent of the drink. "The only way this could be better for me right now," she started, with a sigh, "is if it were spiked."

Her neighbor chuckled. "Not without the kiddo noticing, I'm afraid," he said, signaling with his head toward the living room, where Tyson was in plain sight, working on some homework with a pinched expression which meant he was obviously trying very hard not to count with his fingers.

She laughed lightly, as well. She was glad Tyson had taken her explanation well; she didn't know how she would handle it if she had to deal with not two, but three agitated men at the same time. "Thanks," she told Paul, signaling to the coffee cup in her hands. "And I'm so sorry you had to hear that a while ago. They don't usually argue like that... well, not that loudly, at least."

Paul was just taking a sip of his coffee, so it took him a few seconds to reply. "Really, there's no need to apologize. I know very well how it is with parents and children sometimes. Parenting is a hard job, and the kicker is that kids don't come to realize that until they're already grown and away from their parents."

"Too true." It almost sounded like he was talking from experience, and it made Sally realize that she didn't even know if her new neighbor had a family. She'd seen him come and go, exchanging light pleasantries whenever he saw her, but as far as she could remember, she wasn't aware of anyone else coming in or out of the house. "I'm sorry, I never thought to ask— do you have children, as well?"

"Hmm?" Paul said distractedly as he picked up a cookie. "Oh, no, no kids. I'm a bachelor, still, and I spend far too much time grading papers to have much of a regular social life, I'm afraid," he added with a chuckle that was half amused, half self-deprecating. She could relate; she spent way too much time taking care of her kids to even consider dating.

He took a bite of his cookie and took a moment to swallow before speaking again. "I always had a rocky relationship with my mother, though. It wasn't until after college, and just a few years before she died, that we started to get along better." He looked down at what was left of the cookie in his hand. "These are excellent, by the way."

"Thank you," Sally replied, always grateful when people liked her baking. "And I'm sorry about your mother, as well." She knew very well how it felt to lose a parent; she'd lost three.

"You don't have to be," he retorted, picking up another cookie. He really did seem to like them. "It's been... nine, ten years since she passed? It's been a while."

There was silence for a few moments while they both chewed on their cookies and drank their coffee. They could hear Tyson muttering to himself from the living room. It was only a couple minutes later that Sally gave into the need she felt to clarify what caused the incident that afternoon. "Poseidon... he really does love the boys, you know?"

Paul paused in his movement to bring his cup to his lips, looking at Sally over the rim of the cup for a split second. "It's not my place to judge," he assured her before taking a sip of the warm beverage.

"I know," Sally insisted, "and I appreciate it. I just don't want anyone to get the wrong impression." He seemed to recognize that she wanted to talk about this to someone. He set his cup down on the table and leaned more comfortably against the backrest of his chair, his expression encouraging her to vent if she needed to.

It took her a couple heartbeats, but she started again. "He wasn't ready to be a parent. Neither was I— Percy was very much a surprise. But I don't think Poseidon had ever really even contemplated the possibility of having kids," she concluded, taking a sip of her coffee.

"Do you know what the formen magnus [1] is?" she asked after a pause, squinting her eyes a little. She didn't have to be a betting woman to know that it was probably the oddest question the small-town English teacher had ever been asked in his life.

As expected, Paul's response was a blink and a frown. "Um, I'm afraid I don't?" he replied, sounding like he was unsure whether not knowing was a good thing or a bad thing in this case.

Sally laughed. "Don't worry, I don't either. I don't even know if I'm saying it correctly," she added, somewhat sheepish. "But Poseidon can talk about it for an hour if you give him the chance. He lives and breathes that kind of stuff. The man is the smartest person I've ever known, and he's made it to the top of his field. A veritable celebrity." She shook her head. "But when it comes to this parenting thing... it just doesn't come naturally to him." She looked down at her cup, contemplative.

"A lot of people simply don't have that instinct," Paul interjected, something Sally had come to know was very much true.

She nodded. "And he didn't have a good example himself, either. Sometimes I feel like he thinks if he gets too close to the boys, he might, I don't know, mess them up for life." She finished that sentence with a sigh. "So he gives them what he thinks he _can_ give them... money."

"...And Percy doesn't take that very well, I gather," Paul guessed where she was going with this.

She shook her head, acknowledging that his assessment was correct. "It's probably my fault." It came out as a bit of a frustrated groan. "For years he offered to help us out financially, and I wouldn't accept it. Kept telling him I'd rather Percy have a father than a trust fund."

"That's not a bad philosophy," Paul conceded. She knew she hadn't exactly explained their family dynamics and why Poseidon didn't live with them, but Paul seemed to be following along well enough, even without the details.

"Yes, but then we adopted Tyson, and with his special needs... I couldn't handle it all on my own anymore, so I accepted his offer." She pursed her lips. "Percy saw it as selling out. Thinks he only does it to assuage his conscience."

"Sometimes kids simply can't understand the complexity of certain situations," Paul stated, in a serious tone she assumed was his "teacher" voice. "If his father really does love them, as you say, then I'm sure with time Percy will come to see that."

"I don't know," she retorted with a resigned shake of her head. "Maybe he has a point."

"What do you mean?" Paul asked, proceeding to drink the last few drops of his coffee.

Sally held onto her cup a little bit tighter. She couldn't believe she was saying all of this to someone she barely knew, but Paul had lent her an ear so far, and seemed pretty understanding about it. "Sometimes I wonder if I let him in for the boys, or if I did it because it's convenient for me."

It was a hard truth for her to cop to, and Paul seemed to take it with the seriousness it deserved. He set his cup down again and thought for a while, apparently measuring what to say.

Finally, he spoke, "'She seemed to know that if she swayed the family shook, and if she ever really deeply wavered or despaired the family would fall, the family will to function would be gone'," he quoted [2], nodding his head periodically as if to give the words rhythm. Yes, very "English teacher" of him.

Sally couldn't help the smile that started spreading on her lips. "Is that... Steinbeck?" she asked, unsure if she had gotten the reference right.

To her delight, he nodded his head. " _The Grapes of Wrath_." He reciprocated her smile. "You're a reader?"

"Not so much lately," she admitted with a dismissive wave of her hand. She hadn't read a book that wasn't a study guide for Tyson in a long while. "But when I was younger, yes. I wanted to study English in college, but unfortunately I never got the chance."

"Well, it's never too late," he commented, then hurried to get up when he saw Sally move to pick up the table. "Please, let me," he offered, taking the two plates and one cup off her hands.

She signaled him to put everything down in the sink, and insisted on giving his now empty thermos a quick rinse. "Don't be so hard on yourself," he told her as she lined everything up in the dishwasher. She looked at him curiously, not fully understanding where that came from. "The quote," he reminded her, and it finally clicked in her mind. "It's not selfish to want to make your life easier. You're a mother. What affects you, also affects your children."

He offered her a smile, which she returned in kind. He was probably right. And when put in the words of literary giants, everything seemed to make more sense.

She knew the fear that she was making a mistake was something that would never really go away; it was a parent's prerogative to always second-guess themselves when it came to major decisions in their children's lives. But here is where those decisions had led them— to a small mountain town in rural Colorado, of all places— and she could only hope this move would bring them all closer together, even if it didn't feel that way at the moment.

"How did you fix things?" she asked out of the blue as they stood in the foyer, Paul putting his coat on in order to go back to his house. He paused in his movements, throwing her a confused look. "With your mother," she elaborated.

"Ah," he finally understood her meaning. "Well, she got sick," he revealed as he adjusted his collar. "Lung cancer. Her smoking caught up with her." He left the coat unbuttoned, and she fought the urge to fix it up for him— the mother in her, she figured. She wouldn't let her kids outside without them being completely bundled up, even if they were just walking next door.

"I had to come back to Elysium to take care of her. That was her house, actually," he signaled toward the window with a nod of his head, in the direction his house would be. "Spending time here with her after many years of being away made me realize that many of the things we clashed about before, the things that made me run off to the city without looking back, were actually things we had in common. Things got much easier between us after I understood that."

He took his glasses off and fit them snuggly in one of the inside pockets of his coat, explaining with a chuckle that he didn't want them to get fogged up the moment she opened the door. She watched him get ready, thinking about his words. "So you think it's possible, then, that even if a parent and child don't get along, they might not be so different after all?" She opened the door to let him out.

Sticking his hands in his coat pockets, he took a step to walk out into the porch, but stopped at the doorframe to look back at Sally, who was leaning against the edge of the open door. "In my experience, if a parent and a child don't get along, it's because they're exactly the same." With a nod of his head, he walked out of the house. "Thanks for the cookies. I'll see you around."

She gave him a small wave as he turned at the curb, and then she closed the door to shield herself from the cold, feeling much more optimistic than she had been an hour ago.

.  
.  
.

Percy ended up spending the night at Grover's. His mother wasn't terribly happy about it, and he had to learn the hard way of the Underwoods' love of reed pipes (he would never see Nirvana the same way again), but at least he was good and away from Poseidon for the time being.

He sat with Grover and his girlfriend during lunch again and tried not to think about the previous day at all, but he couldn't keep his eyes from periodically straying to the back of the cafeteria, to the table where the Grace siblings and Annabeth sat huddled together. Jason and Thalia were talking, the boy explaining something that made his sister repeatedly roll her eyes. Annabeth was resting her head against her hand, moving her food on her plate from side to side distractedly.

"What's the story with those three?" The question was out of his lips before he even realized he was speaking. Grover and Juniper paused their eating to look in the direction he was looking. "Are they, like, actually attached at the hip?"

"Erm, yeah, pretty much," Grover started. The trio at the back of the cafeteria didn't seem aware that someone was looking at them, but Percy was still paranoid that Annabeth would somehow feel his eyes on her, so he urged his two friends to stop staring. "They were friends since they were kids, and now they live together, so they're pretty much like siblings."

Percy made a face. "What? How does that even work?"

"Well, Annabeth's mother was close with Thalia's dad," Grover explained. "They were friends from high school, I think. So the families were always close. Thalia's mom... died..." Grover looked a little uncomfortable mentioning that detail, for some reason. "She died when we were in elementary. And then their father had to move to Los Angeles for work, but Jason and Thalia wanted to stay here, so I guess they arranged things so Annabeth's mom would be their legal guardian. They've been living together since then."

"But then Annabeth's mother became a Senator," Juniper added, as an extra piece of info. She'd tried to deny it a couple of times in the short time they'd known each other, but Percy could tell that she was a bit of a gossip. "She spends most of her time in Denver and D.C. So now the three of them live with Annabeth's dad most of the year."

"Her parents are divorced?" Percy asked, trying to make a mental chart of this entire situation. The lines were already starting to cross in his mind.

"Yep," Juniper nodded. "They split up when we were just little kids, but my mother says it was a bit of a scandal. Not many divorces in Elysium, as you might imagine. Of course, nobody actually talks about it in front of Miranda Chase— she's kind of intimidating, even back when she wasn't a Senator."

"Annabeth's dad is a History professor at A&M," Grover explained, seeming a bit anxious to get off the more gossipy parts of the story. "He got married again, and they had twin boys." At Percy's look of disbelief (five kids? _Five?_ ), he mumbled, "Their house is really big," and went back to eating his carnitas.

"That sounds like something out of _Dynasty_." [3] At Grover's and Juniper's looks of confusion, he explained. "My mom likes watching really old TV shows sometimes." They went back to eating lunch in relative silence, but Percy couldn't help but look in Annabeth's direction from time to time.

Once, he found her looking right back at him.

When he saw her get up and start walking in his direction, he jumped to his feet. "I gotta go. See you guys later," he muttered, waving distractedly at Grover when he asked if he could have the rest of his food. He rushed to get out of the cafeteria before Annabeth could catch up to him.

"Percy, wait!"

He didn't slow his stride, but she caught up to him anyway, in the hallway just past the cafeteria doors. "I have nothing to say to you," he warned without looking at her.

"Then don't say anything," she offered. "I just need you to listen."

That finally got him to stop, just short of going through the door that led to the next hall. He stopped so abruptly, she almost barreled right into him. Why should he give her anything she needs? He didn't owe her anything. "Why, so you can keep lying to me?" he said, turning to her with a glare.

She took a breath before speaking. "Technically, I didn't lie— I just wasn't completely forthcoming about certain things."

"Certain things like the boyfriend you never mentioned?" he retorted, eyebrows so high they almost got lost under his unruly, dark fringe.

She bit her lower lip. "Yes." Angry at her admission, he made to leave again, and she rushed to add an explanation. "I was going to tell you! I wanted you to meet him, I just didn't know how to broach the subject from the get-go."

"Right, but not telling me about him makes me so much more eager to be buddies with him," he retorted, sarcasm dripping from his words.

"It's not what you think at all," she hurried to add. "Look, he's in Denver. About three hours away by bus. If we leave now, we'll make it back by dinnertime and we might manage not to get in trouble with our parents." She said all of this like it made complete sense. Guess what: it didn't.

Now, Percy wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed, but he was pretty sure it wasn't just him being dumb this time. "Seriously??" he shot back, looking at her in complete befuddlement. Surely any second now she'd scream "Psych!" and admit that she was just pulling his leg.

But she never did. She just stared at him with her big gray eyes, begging him without words to give her a chance. "Please, I know if you come with me, you'll understand." Her hands tightened around the strap of her book bag. "And if you still hate me after this, I'll stay away from you forever. You'll never have to talk to me again, I swear."

He felt himself start to give in, and he scolded himself mentally for being such a sucker. But she seemed so earnest, almost desperate for him to say yes, he really couldn't help it. He caved. "...Fine. But you're paying my fare. After yesterday, I'm pretty sure I'm not getting an allowance this week."

Together they walked a couple blocks to the Greyhound station. They didn't talk much, and the silence was tense. It was going to be a long three hours to Denver.

.  
.  
.

Of all the places he expected Annabeth to take him to, a hospital hadn't even made the list. And yet, there Percy was, staring through a window at a young man lying prone and still on a hospital bed, all sorts of tubes and cables jabbed into him, tethering his life to a series of monitors and tanks and IV bags that made the scene look like something out of a horror movie.

"So... this is who I wanted you to meet," Annabeth started, leaning against the opposite wall and looking everywhere but at him. She also didn't seem inclined to look at the boy on the bed, either. "Percy Jackson, meet Luke Castellan. My boyfriend."

Percy swept his gaze between her and the inside of the hospital room, not yet understanding what was happening. But she continued speaking, so he stayed quiet. "I've known Luke my whole life. He grew up down the street from Thalia, Jason and me, and we always hung out together. He and Thalia were always getting into messes, and leaving Jason and me to bail them out of trouble." She tried to smile as she remembered their childhood days, but was only able to get the corners of her mouth crinkled up, just barely.

"Everybody likes Luke. He's got a charisma to him, he's a natural leader. I always had kind of a crush on him, but I thought he always saw me as a little sister. When he told me he liked me, I was over the moon. He was my first boyfriend. My first kiss." She hugged herself, and Percy wasn't sure if that was because it was cold in the hallway they were standing in, or if it was because she needed a hug. Either way, there wasn't much he could do about it, given that he was supposed to be angry at her.

Except he wasn't sure he was angry at her anymore.

"Last fourth of July, he and Thalia decided to swipe Luke's dad's new truck and take it for a joyride. Jason and I had already been grounded one time too many that summer, so we refused to get involved in any more of their hijinks. They went alone. Luke was driving. They pushed it too far, and on a curve the truck flipped over, several times. Thalia was thrown from the car. She managed to call 911 but Luke was already unconscious when the ambulance got there." She pursed her lips. "He hasn't woken up ever since."

She looked at him for a moment and he could see that her eyes were full of tears. She dropped her gaze after a heartbeat. "His parents have taken the case to doctor after doctor, but every single one told them it was hopeless. I think they've given up on him, by now, but I haven't. So when I heard my mother ranting that your family was moving to Elysium, I thought, well, if anyone could help Luke it would be Poseidon Irving, right?"

The pieces of this whole mess finally started falling together for Percy, and he didn't know how to feel. On the one hand, he felt used. Had she only attempted to befriend him so he would get his father to help her boyfriend? That sounded so... underhanded. Everything in him rejected that notion.

She let out a pained sigh. "I didn't mean to hurt you, Percy. I really do like you, and I was going to tell you about this eventually, I just... didn't know how." She looked down at her shoes and discreetly wiped a tear off her cheek, and Percy had never felt more conflicted in his life.

Because now when he looked at her, he could feel the desperation rolling out of her in waves. She obviously really cared about this Luke guy. So could he blame her, really, for reaching out for every glimmer of hope that came her way, no matter how much of a stretch it was? He didn't know that he would've done otherwise if he were in her place. It might be worth being a little underhanded, if it meant he could save someone he loved.

She didn't ask him to do anything, and he didn't offer to do anything. And the ride back to Elysium was just as silent and painful as the ride from there had been, except a little sadder.

They split up at the bike rack at the entrance of the school. Annabeth parted ways with a quiet "I'll see you in class." Percy wasn't entirely sure what to make of that. She had offered, before they went to Denver that afternoon, that if he didn't want to talk to her again after this, he didn't have to. But he wasn't sure what he wanted yet. He had to think about... everything.

He went inside the main school building to get his books. After he got his things from his locker, he hurried his step so he could leave— he was already late for dinner and his mother would not appreciate him skipping it two days in a row— but before he could make his way out, the notice board near the main entrance caught his eye. It was where the school board and faculty posted the latest news, warnings, notices, and sign-up sheets for extracurriculars.

There was one more thing he needed to do before he went home.

.  
.  
.

Sally hadn't seen her eldest son in over a full day now, and she thought his return home deserved commemoration despite the circumstances that led to it, so she decided that night that she was going to make fried chicken for dinner, from scratch. Tyson helped her make the biscuits, and everything was almost ready to eat. Now they were only waiting for Percy to arrive.

"I'm going to need some serving bowls," she told her youngest as she pulled the biscuits out of the oven. "Can you please go get some from the boxes in the basement?"

"I'll get 'em!" Tyson exclaimed, always eager to help.

"Get me two large ones and a smaller one for the gravy— and don't run when you're carrying them!" she warned him as he rushed off toward the back of the house to fulfill this critical mission.

As she was lifting the biscuits off the baking sheet with a spatula, she caught sight of Percy through the living room windows, parking his bike by the side of the house. He didn't seem angry anymore. She smiled. Looking at Percy never failed to remind her of Poseidon; her son was the spitting image of his father when he was younger, when they first fell in love.

_"I wish we could just run away," she said as she cuddled up to Poseidon's side, taking in the view of the glimmering ocean as the moon rose over Montauk. The weekend was coming to a close, and she didn't want it to end. It had been the most magical weekend of her life. "I wish we could go where nobody knows us and just... be together. Just like this."_

_"That sounds nice," Poseidon mumbled sleepily, pausing only to press a kiss on the crown of her head. "Where would we go?"_

_"Hmmm, let me think..." She closed her eyes for a moment, letting her mind's eye and the warmth of her lover's body take her to a beautiful place. "Oh, I know," she said when it came to her, sitting up so she could look at him directly. "Elysium, Colorado."_

_He made a face, and she laughed. "Colorado? It can't be somewhere closer to the coast?" He pointed in the direction of the waves, where they lapped at the shore just a few feet away from them._

_"Nope," she shook her head playfully, and leaned in to kiss the tip of his nose, just because his grumpy expression was so adorable. He'd lived in New York his whole life, and to him, feeling the presence of the ocean nearby was as much a fact of life as the necessity of eating and breathing._

_"It's this small town in rural Colorado, nestled in the Rockies," she described. "When I was a kid, before my parents died, we took a train trip across the country. We had to stop in Elysium for a day because there was a snowstorm." She cozied up to his side again, and he wrapped his arm around her without a thought. "I didn't even mind. It was the most beautiful place I've ever seen."_

_"More beautiful than this?" Once again he pointed to their view of the beach._

_"It's a different kind of beauty," she clarified. "Being surrounded by the mountains like that... it puts into perspective how insignificant we are. It really makes you recognize the important things in life." She sighed, content. "I always thought if I ever had a family, if I had to raise children, I'd like to do it there. Maybe this was just me because I was an impressionable kid, but there was a sense of safety, of tranquility there that I haven't really felt anywhere else."_

_They were quiet for a minute, Sally lost in her memories and Poseidon mulling over her words. Finally, as he moved lightly so that they would be sitting in a more comfortable position, he spoke. "I don't suppose this place is also a major center for neurosurgery?" Sally laughed, but offered him no sympathy. "Fine. We'll go there someday."_

_"Promise?" she nuzzled his cheek with the tip of her nose._

_"Promise."_

"Mom? I got the bowls."

Tyson's voice snapped Sally out of her reverie. "Oh. Yes, yes, bring them here. Percy's home now, so we'll be eating soon." The boy put the bowls he was carrying down on the kitchen island so that she could plate the food. "Hey, sweetheart, come here," she stopped him before he could turn around to go and greet his brother. As he came closer, she wrapped him up in a hug. "You know I love you, right? I love you so much."

She felt Tyson nod against the side of her head. "I know. I love you, too, Momma." She kissed his temple and with one last squeeze, let him out of her arms around the same time Percy came into the living room and dumped his bag on the couch.

"Go wash your hands, dinner's almost ready," she pointed out to him, stepping forward to greet him, while Tyson started putting the biscuits in one of the bowls he'd brought. "Did you have a good night at Grover's?"

"It was... musical," Percy grumbled as he oh-so-unwillingly submitted to his mother's welcome kiss.

"Everything went well at school?" she inquired further as she took some cutlery out of a drawer to set the table. Tyson was now plating the fried chicken in another bowl. She told him to leave the mac 'n cheese casserole in the oven; she would bring it over to the table herself. She didn't want him burning himself by accident.

"Well, turns out the girl I like is in love with a dude in a coma, but no biggie," Percy replied as he let himself fall into one of the kitchen table chairs.

Both Sally and Tyson stopped abruptly what they were doing to stare at Percy in shock. "I... don't even know what to say to that," she admitted out loud. It sounded like the plot of a (bad) soap opera.

"Like a sugar coma?" Tyson asked a second later, confused about the term.

Percy did not respond to either. "Also, I signed up for the swim team," he declared, almost like an afterthought.

"Percy, that's great!" she exclaimed, dropping the cutlery on the table so she could go and give him a big hug. She took this as a positive sign; if Percy was swimming again, doing what he loved, maybe this was a hint that things were going back to normal, that they were going to be okay.

"Well, it's a good thing I made fried chicken to celebrate, then," she said as she let go of him. "But don't think this lets you off the hook about yesterday, young man," she tried her best to turn her ear-to-ear smile into a serious expression, but couldn't quite pull it off. "You'll have to talk things out with your father and apologize. You both said a lot of things you didn't mean, and that's not okay."

"I meant _some_ of them," the teen muttered under his breath.

"Percy."

"Fine, fine, I'll apologize next time I see him," he conceded reluctantly.

That was good enough for Sally. "Great. Now go wash your hands. I made blue cupcakes for dessert." That was incentive enough to get him off the chair and to the kitchen sink, while Tyson asked what felt like a hundred and one questions about comas that they both tried to steer him away from. No need to speak of sad topics for the night.

It was their first not-really-celebratory celebratory dinner in their new home, and she meant for them to enjoy it, as a family. There would be time for all of that later.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [1] The foramen magnum is the hole in the back of the skull through which the spinal cord passes to exit the cranium. And yes, Sally _was_ saying it wrong.  
>   
>  [2] Like Paul explained, this is a quote from John Steinbeck's 1939 novel _The Grapes of Wrath_.  
>   
>  [3] For all of you young'uns out there who might not recognize this one, _Dynasty_ was a famous soap opera that ran on ABC from 1981 to 1989. It was about this huge oil tycoon and his family, and all the intrigue and scandal you'd imagine would come out of a soap opera of this kind. It was the main competitor to CBS' _Dallas_ , which I believe got a TV remake not too long ago?  
>   
> And so, we've come to the end of the first "episode" of _Elysium_. I've already watched the second episode of _Everwood_ but haven't started writing yet, so I can't give you an ETA of the next chapter. I hope you'll stick with me even if I can't promise speedy updates anymore— but hey, be sure to follow either me or my profile so you don't miss when I finally get around to uploading the next one! You can also follow me on Tumblr (girls-are-weird), where I will be dropping snippets and excerpts as I go along.  
>   
>  In the meantime, please do let me know what you thought of this chapter and if you're liking this story so far. I love your reviews and will reply ASAP if you send me a question or a comment. :) Thanks for the support, guys. See you when I see you!


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